


Once More, With Feelings

by Ellis_Hendricks



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Banter, Casefic (kinda), F/M, Flirting, Mutual Pining, Post-Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper friendship - Freeform, Solving crimes, pre-sherlolly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellis_Hendricks/pseuds/Ellis_Hendricks
Summary: “But you can’t do this again, can you?”“I had a lovely day. I’d love to - I just…”But what if they went ahead and did it anyway?Set in the gap between ‘The Empty Hearse’ and ‘The Sign of Three’, and kind of fits with canon if you squint.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Juldooz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juldooz/gifts), [geekmama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekmama/gifts).



> About twenty-five years ago, Juldooz sent me this message on tumblr:
> 
> “I don’t know if you’re taking requests or prompts, but I had an idea and it fit your tone. It totally feels like something you can pull off. Ta-da: Friendship prompt, pre-sherlolly, slight pining. Set during S3 after his thank you/goodbye. He legitimately is letting her move on (maybe he doesn’t know he loves her, of course “she matters most” but that can be platonic, right?) and she is actively pursuing her relationship with Tom while they continue to have a working relationship.”
> 
> I promised I would think about it, and warned that it might take a while for the idea to percolate - so here we are! That’s just how I roll (i.e. glacially). But it _is _finished, and I’ll post the chapters over the next few weeks.__
> 
> __Huge thanks to geekmama for beta-reading every chapter, particularly for ensuring that this sort-of casefic (my first attempted) makes decent sense, and for basically re-writing some key sentences for me when my brain just went ‘blaaahhh’._ _
> 
> __I also put a call-out on tumblr when I was planning this fic, asking for ideas - some great ones came back, and several feature in the story to a greater or lesser extent. I’ll flag these contributions in the relevant chapters._ _

Sherlock stepped out of the cab, paid the driver, and, as the car drove away, took a moment to survey and assess his surroundings. Nope, it hadn’t improved. It was still like being transported to a place where all is lost - and not in a good way, not in an _interesting_ way. He still found it barely comprehensible that John and Mary would choose to live here - after all, it was only a couple of garden gnomes and a few short miles from being the suburbs, for God’s sake! How John and Mary could expect anyone they actually cared about to make the tedious trek to this godforsaken hinterland, Sherlock had no idea - and yet, here he was. Yet another sacrifice he was prepared to make for The Work.

Observing with a shudder the hanging basket outside the ground floor dwelling, Sherlock descended the short flight of steps down to John and Mary’s basement flat, and rang the doorbell. It was answered surprisingly swiftly by John, who appeared to be in the process of putting on his coat. A good sign, at least.

“Ah, excellent! You’re ready!” Sherlock said. “Why didn’t you answer my texts?”

 “Ahhh, we did,” John replied, a strange sort of expression on his face. Although for John, confusion was sort of a default look, so Sherlock shrugged it off.

“Is that the milkman, John?” Mary’s voice called from somewhere in the flat.

“Not in my experience, no,” John replied, without turning around. “It’s Sherlock.”

Mary, already wearing her coat, appeared beside her fiancé; they were now all standing in the litter-tray-sized area that was John and Mary’s entrance hall. Sherlock could feel John’s ridiculous mid-life-crisis bicycle bumping up against his leg.

“Hiya!” Mary trilled. “Didn’t you get John’s texts? We’re just off to look at a wedding venue.”

Sherlock cast his mind back to the message that had come through in the cab on his way over.

“Oh, you were actually serious about that?” he queried. “I thought that was just...”

He waved his hand around vaguely, hoping they would understand his obvious assumption.

“Yeah, of course we were serious, Sherlock,” Mary replied. “The wedding is only a few months off, and we kind of need somewhere to put people.”

Sherlock frowned, concerned momentarily that he might be experiencing some sort of memory ‘episode’; there was a definite familiarity about this conversation.

“I thought you’d already found somewhere?” he questioned.

“Yeah,” John said, setting his jaw and keeping his eyes on Sherlock. “But apparently we don’t like it anymore.”

“This one has an orangery,” Mary added, threading her arm through John’s.

“Is that...a good thing?” Sherlock ventured. He was trying and failing to make the connection between the hollow and tedious ritual that was marriage, and the presence - or lack thereof - of an oversized, citrus-filled conservatory.

“Assuming it must be,” John replied, with a tight smile. “It costs two grand more than the first place.”

“Which we don’t like,” Mary put in, nudging her fiancé.

“Which we don’t like,” John dutifully affirmed.

“You know,” Sherlock said in response - John’s discomfort would be passably amusing if this whole scenario wasn’t quite so inconvenient to his own schedule - “I’m sure you could probably strike a very good deal with Speedy’s, particularly if you let Mrs Hudson do the negotiating -  Mr Chatterjee still has a fair amount of making-up to do.”

Sherlock suppressed his amusement as he watched John’s slacken into an expression of dumb bewilderment, and Mary’s twist into a sarcastic smile.

“Yeah, thanks, Sherlock,” Mary said, patting him on the arm. “But I think we might need to do better than wedging our guests into wipe-clean booths and shoving a kebab in front of them.”

Sherlock tilted his head to one side.

“To be honest, I was thinking about it more in terms of cutting down on my travel time,” he admitted, prompting Mary to whack him with her gloves.

He couldn’t help but notice that his hosts were both attempting to edge their way past him to the front door, with very little subtlety.

“So, you’re- you’re really not coming?” he asked.

“No,” Mary replied brightly, looking over her shoulder as they stepped out into the winter sunshine. “But _you_ can come with _us_ , if you like?”

Sherlock immediately felt his face contort into something akin to a screwed-up piece of paper.

“Why would I do that?”

Mary shrugged, her hands stuffed deep into her coat pockets.

“How about because you love us,” she said. “And because you want to give your Best Man role the effort and commitment that it deserves.”

Sherlock offered her his most withering look, which seemed to do nothing to drive the irritatingly twinkly smile from Mary Morstan’s face. Her one-woman crusade to put him in touch with the ‘feelings’ she was convinced that he had showed no sign of abating; not only was it utterly futile, but she went about it with all of the tact of a jackhammer.

“Or maybe just because the big, brooding consulting detective gets a bit lonely sometimes, and wants some company?” Mary added airily, releasing a hand so she could thread her arm through John’s.

Sherlock snorted.

“Now you really _are_ being ridiculous,” he said. “John, you do realise that the woman you’re planning to marry may well be a very dangerous fantasist? Probably best you learn about this sort of thing now, before it’s too late.”

“Hm?”

John briefly glanced up from where he had been engaged for the past two minutes in angrily trying to navigate the minicab app on his phone. Mary grinned at Sherlock, only one step shy of actually sticking out her tongue at him. He was now starting to accept that his best laid plans were rapidly disintegrating on the pavement of this tree-lined, provincial purgatory; it was, he feared, time to exercise a little honesty.

“Look, I’ll admit I don’t have anything very obviously brilliant lined up - perhaps a six at the most - but one or two things look _fairly_ promising, including something that looks like an attempted extortion…”

“Hm, funny,” John replied, nodding. “Because I’m fairly sure that’s what’s going to happen to us this morning, too.”

Mary gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs.

“Actually, now that I think of it,” Sherlock said, now firmly in the mindset of preparing to cut his losses. “I could probably get by with just you, Mary.”

“Oh, cheers,” John mumbled, craning his neck for a better view down the road. As though he could actually see over the top of parked cars.

“Ahhh, I’m touched, Sherlock,” Mary smiled. “I mean, massively suspicious, _obviously_ , but touched all the same.”

“It’s just that it could be useful to have a wife-slash-girlfriend figure on hand, in case the need should arise,” Sherlock replied, with a vague gesture.

John gave a dramatic eye-roll, at the same time as Mary gave a brief snort of laughter.

“For a second I thought you were going to say something nice about my value solving cases,” she said.

“Well, that, too, obviously...” Sherlock said, unsure whether, at this stage, it was worth even trying to salvage the situation through flattery.

“Sherlock, we would make a crap couple,” Mary said. “I mean, _totally_ unconvincing. And I’m not even sure I could keep a straight face.”

“Okay, forget that, I merely-”

“You should ask Molly.”

At Mary’s words, spoken so casually, Sherlock instantly forgot how he’d been planning to conclude the sentence he’d started. Simultaneously, something inside him seemed to spontaneously leap, and then plummet hard, immediately turning him into a sort of human test-your-strength machine. In that moment, he wouldn’t have been particularly surprised if a loud bell had clanged somewhere above his head, and a large man - probably in a vest and flat cap - had handed him a cheap teddy bear.

“I thought you said it went well last time?” Mary continued, slightly raising one eyebrow.

Sherlock was fairly sure he _hadn’t_ said that. That it went _well_ , at any rate. He wouldn’t have used those words, not to Mary, who couldn’t be trusted to take anything he said at face-value - particularly, it seemed, when it related to Molly Hooper. It was deeply unsettling, and Sherlock got the distinct impression that Mary enjoyed seeing him unsettled.

“It was...fine,” he said, eventually. “Productive.”

“So, what’s different now?” Mary probed.

Well, for one thing, Sherlock reflected, it had been a bad idea even when The Fiancé only existed as a nebulous, vaguely man-shaped entity in his imagination. But once he clapped eyes on the man, then it became a whole new level of not-good. As Sherlock had taken in the spectacle that was The Fiancé, it was as though someone had been given a physical description of Sherlock Holmes and instructed to produce a sketch. Albeit someone with limited imagination or artistic talent.

And it complicated _everything_. But mostly it complicated his...thinking. All these weeks later, Sherlock still couldn’t decide whether Molly’s boyfriend’s physical resemblance to him was a good thing or a bad thing - he knew he _should_ consider it a _bad thing_ , because it confused and muddled everything, and left too many questions unasked and unanswered. But apparently, his brain wasn’t entirely happy with that rationalisation. Or maybe it was because his brain wasn’t entirely in control of this particular conundrum…

“Nothing,” he lied (fairly convincingly, to his ears). “But it was hardly a sustainable arrangement. Molly and I both agreed on that. After all, she has other...commitments.”

“Greg said you were acting weird that day,” John put in, slightly distractedly, while looking accusingly at his phone.

“I was doing nothing of the sort,” Sherlock snapped back. “If there was anything unusual in my conduct it was simply a result of adjusting to a new...dynamic. It might have taken a little longer than usual for me to...hit my stride.”

“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t been so busy trying to show off to Molly,” John continued. “Then you might have solved that Moran case _before_ I ended up doing a Guy Fawkes impression.”

Sherlock gaped at him. Showing off? He was _not_ going to let that stand (Lestrade would have to be dealt with later).

“If _you_ hadn’t been such a child about the whole ‘back from the dead’ thing, then you would have been with _me_ that day, and not wandering aimlessly around London, making yourself easy prey for kidnappers.”

“Wandering aimlessly? I was outside _your_ house when that happened, you git; I was coming to see _you_!”

“Well, your willingness to look at things in their proper perspective, and apologise, speaks well of you, John.”

“I wasn’t coming to _apologise_ , Sherlock, I was-”

“Molly’s happy to go with you.”

Sherlock’s head seemed to swivel quickly and involuntarily in the direction of the words. When he did so, he found Mary looking at him, beatifically.

“ _What?_ ”

“Just texted her,” Mary replied, phone in hand. “While you two were squabbling. She’s free all day, and she’s going to come with you.”

Sherlock glanced between Mary and the offending device in her hand, so many competing thoughts rushing to escape him that they all seemed to reach a bottleneck before any of them could quite leave his mouth.

“There you go - problem solved,” John said, as though it actually was. “Where the bloody hell is this taxi?”

“She’s just out with Rufus, but she says she won’t be long,” Mary continued, reading from her phone.

“Who’s Rufus?” Sherlock heard himself asking, perhaps a little too quickly and insistently. The name of The Fiancé seemed to have taken on a peculiar, viscous quality in his mind, making it almost impossible to keep nailed down - that said, Rufus didn’t sound right at all.

Mary eyed him, a hint of amusement on her lips.

“The dog,” she said, in a tone suggesting that she was stating the obvious. “Tom’s dog. Their dog.”

_Tom!_ There it was (for what it was worth). Sherlock generally tried not to think about the existence of the dog - in particular the implication that it was a shared dog. And especially if it was a good one, like an Irish setter or a bloodhound. He instead liked to think of it as some sort of ridiculous, decorative non-dog, like a tzu or a poodle - or even better, a cockapoo. A dog that wore jumpers and had to be carried in a handbag; a dog that Molly couldn’t possibly be attached to.

“Well, anyway, you’re going to have to un-ask her,” Sherlock said, aiming for casual indifference. He fixed his gaze somewhere up the road, aware of how risky it would be to meet Mary’s eye at this moment.

“Why?” Mary demanded. “You claim you need someone to come with you today, and I’ve found you the one person who can actually tolerate you for more than ten minutes. And who won’t put up with any of your crap. _And_ knows more about science than you do.”

Out of sheer desperation, Sherlock looked to John, clinging on to the small hope that his friend might intervene. Instead, John just gave a traitorous shrug, absolving himself of all responsibility.

“Text back and say you got it wrong,” Sherlock insisted. “Spectacularly, extraordinarily wrong. That won’t be hard for Molly to believe.”

“Just so you know, insulting me isn’t going to help, Sherlock,” Mary grinned. “Oh look, Molly’s replied! She wants to know where she should meet you.”

He arranged his features into a reproachful stare, made all the more difficult by the sudden and troubling spike in his heart rate. At any rate, Mary seemed entirely immune to it.

“Go on then - text her,” she urged, with a gleeful smile. “Don’t keep a girl waiting.”

To Sherlock’s relief, rather than respond, he was able to step out into the road, arm outstretched, and hail a passing cab. It screamed to a halt several inches from where they were standing and sat there, engine gunning; John and Mary both turned to look at him.

“How did you-?” John started. “We don’t even _get_ black cabs around here!”

“Off you go,” Sherlock replied, with a shoo-ing motion. “Enjoy your menagerie.”

“ _Orangery_ ,” Mary corrected, as she followed John into the taxi. “Have fun - and say hi to Molly for us!”

Within seconds, the car was disappearing around the corner at the end of the street. Sherlock watched it for a moment, then slowly removed his phone from his pocket, scrolling through his contacts until he saw Molly’s name appear. He paused, thumb poised above the winking cursor, his pulse suddenly racing. With an intake of breath, he set off briskly in the direction of the main road, composing a message as he went.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"It was not a good idea. Patently. She’d been doing well recently, and this wasn’t going to help….Or, looking at it another way, maybe it would serve as a useful experiment, a test?"_
> 
> Molly meets up with Sherlock for another day of crime-solving...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left precious kudos and comments on the first chapter. Hope you like seeing events from Molly's perspective, too!

As soon as she emerged from the depths of Blackfriars Tube station and onto street level, Molly’s phone started to vibrate and fire off text alerts in quick succession. All but one of them were from Sherlock, and when she opened the first one, she was relieved that she was no longer sitting next to that inquisitive five-year old and her grandmother on the Tube - or anyone, really, who didn’t want to see a fairly graphic, full-colour photograph of a recently-deceased corpse. Or, in fact, four photographs. The fifth message from Sherlock, clearly an afterthought, read:

**Sorry. Crime scene photos. Probably obvious – SH**

The fact that this kind of thing barely registered on the weirdness scale said something - although whether it said more about Sherlock or about her, Molly wasn’t sure any longer. She would file that away under ‘things it’s best not to think about’ - a list to which she could probably also add why, at very short notice, she was currently on her way to meet Sherlock at a crime scene on a perfectly good Saturday morning. Or why, when she’d received Mary’s message an hour ago, her immediate response was to say yes, committing herself before she’d even heard the details, let alone considered whether it was a good idea.

It was not a good idea. Patently. She’d been doing well recently, and this wasn’t going to help….Or, looking at it another way, maybe it would serve as a useful experiment, a test? Either way, Molly was surprised that Sherlock had even made the request; he had seemed pretty resolved that their previous day solving crimes together was a one-off. And that intriguing fact alone, Molly reflected, that apparent about-turn in Sherlock’s stance, was, she acknowledged, enough to hook her in.

But then she remembered the photos on her phone, and immediately felt a flash of guilt - regardless of either her motives or Sherlock’s, there _was_ actually a crime to solve, a dead body that until recently was a person probably bustling through the mobs of weekend tourists like she was. Although unlike her, this person had clearly fallen from a pretty significant height onto a pretty hard pavement.

As the crowds from the station started to disperse, Molly remembered the last, unread text. It was from Mary:

**Thanks again for stepping in! And** **tell him that if he’s a tit, I’ll make him wear a kilt at the wedding - Mary xx**

She was still smiling at this when a shadow fell over her, and Molly instinctively side-stepped to move around the obstacle. Except that the obstacle smelled very familiar - the kind of familiar that caused her insides to perform a lively gymnastics sequence.

“Oh. Hi,” she started, tucking her phone away. “I hadn't expected...sorry, I just assumed we were meeting at the crime scene.”

Sherlock’s very first text, which followed her exchange with Mary, had included an address a few streets from the station. 

“It was on my way,” he replied. “I think it's probably quicker to get to central London from Edinburgh than it is from John and Mary’s flat.”

Molly smiled. She remembered Tom's enthusiasm on the one occasion they had both visited John and Mary's place; it was the kind of place he thought _they_ should buy together - maybe not a basement flat, but the sort of neighbourhood, anyway. Quiet, away from things, safe. Molly had remained noncommittal - yet another thing she was being noncommittal about.

“Anyway, I apologise for taking up your time on your day off,” Sherlock continued, as they started to walk. Before she had time to reply, he added, “Obviously, it was entirely Mary's fault, but still.”

Now she was confused.

“Oh, sorry, she...she said you needed some help?” Molly said, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “I wasn’t sure...I mean, after last time-”

“Like I said, Mary was apparently feeling ‘playful’ today,” Sherlock said, frowning at his phone. After a moment, his expression seemed to change, as though something had just occurred to him. “But your assistance is very welcome,” he added.

Molly wasn’t sure that she was any less confused; the comment about Mary had thrown her slightly. While Molly felt she’d got to know Mary a little over the past couple of months, she couldn’t honestly say that they were close friends, so it wasn’t as though she could ask her without it seeming weird - and it certainly didn’t look as though Sherlock was going to elaborate.

“It’s not a problem,” she told him, quickening her pace to keep up with Sherlock’s ridiculously long strides. “I didn’t have any plans. Well, unless you count mending the cat-flap and defrosting the freezer.”

Sherlock turned far enough to quirk an eyebrow at her.

“The last time Mrs Hudson defrosted the freezer at 221B, she found five human kidneys and a bag of gallstones I thought I’d lost,” he said, smiling. “I was a lot happier than she was.”

Molly started to return the smile, when a memory sparked somewhere in the back of her brain.

“Oh, Mrs Woods, wasn’t it? The gallstones?”

She could now vividly remember bagging up the gallstones in question and dropping them off at Sherlock’s flat - must have been, what, three years ago now? The woman had died of completely natural causes, it turned out, but Sherlock had been visibly enthused by the size and volume of these particular specimens and…well, back then, she was in the habit of doing him favours. He was certainly a lot more receptive to clinical waste than he was to thoughtful Christmas gifts.

Sherlock turned to look at her again, and unless Molly was entirely misreading it, he actually looked...impressed.

“Mm,” he confirmed. “I’d completely forgotten about them - they were jammed at the back under some peas. Suffered a bit from freezer-burn, but that in itself made for an interesting experiment.”

“I’d like to see the results sometime,” Molly replied, before she knew what she was saying. Oh God, did that sound like flirting?

“You’d be more than welcome,” Sherlock replied. Apparently, if it _had_ sounded like flirting, either Sherlock hadn't noticed or...possibly hadn't minded? Either way, she really needed to keep herself in check.

A minute or so later, once they'd crossed a busy main road, and Molly had once again caught up, Sherlock spoke again.

“So, where is, ah...where is Tom today?”

The question took her by surprise. Sherlock would usually rather endure long minutes of complete silence than subject himself to small-talk.

“He's, um, he's working,” Molly replied, still trying to unpick Sherlock's motives. “He sometimes gets called in to the office at the weekend, or has to go out in the community.”

“What line of work is he in?” Sherlock asked.

Molly glanced across at Sherlock, who was looking straight ahead of him, his expression giving nothing away. Surely he wasn’t serious? Granted, Sherlock had only met Tom for all of thirty seconds, but that was usually long enough for him to perform at least half a dozen (usually scathing) deductions. As he wasn’t giving anything away, Molly decided she'd just have to play along.

“He works for an MP's office,” she replied.

Sherlock cocked his head to one side, apparently considering this for a second.

“Anyone I would know?”

Molly gave a brief chuff of laughter.

“Well, he hasn’t had anyone murdered, or been caught up in an international terrorism plot, so probably not.”

She saw Sherlock smile slightly, as he shuffled through the messages on his phone. Somehow, he seemed to be able to manoeuvre his way through the sprawling throng of people completely unscathed and without even looking up, whereas Molly found herself tripping over tourists or being jostled by impatient locals every few feet.

“Anyway,” she said, catching up again. “Tom prepares briefings, books travel, manages the MP’s diary - that kind of thing.”

As Sherlock directed them round a corner, he turned to her with a raised eyebrow.

“So, he’s a...secretary?”

Molly didn’t miss the tiny smile that Sherlock was only half-heartedly trying to suppress, and rolled her eyes at him in return.

“He’s a parliamentary assistant.”

“Does he make the _tea_?”

She narrowed her eyes at him in what was intended as a warning, but which was desperately undermined by the fact that _she_ was now trying to suppress a smile, too.

“I know you think it’s boring,” she said. “But you think everyone’s job is boring.”

“ _Your_ job isn’t boring,” he shot back, so quickly that it took Molly by surprise.

“Um...thank you,” she said, because it sounded very much like Sherlock’s idea of a compliment. “I know it isn’t. And Tom doesn’t think his job is boring, either.”

Sherlock seemed to give this a moment’s reflection.

“Yeees, but _his_ job is perhaps not so much boring as entirely pointless,” he said eventually. “Given that my brother, in fact, runs the country. The rest is more or less just window-dressing.”

Molly shook her head, smiling. True as she suspected this to be, she probably wasn’t going to repeat that to Tom anytime soon. These days, most things involving Sherlock fell into that category - not that Tom had ever said anything, but it just felt easier, safer that way.

“Anyway, shall we?” Sherlock said, lifting the yellow police tape at the perimeter of the crime scene, and gesturing for Molly to go ahead of him.

There wasn't a huge amount to show for the crime scene; one side of the road had been blocked off, but there was only minimal police presence, some of whom were packing equipment back into a mobile forensics lab. The body Molly had seen in the photos was no longer there, instead replaced by a series of orange markers showing where the victim - and any other evidence - had previously lain.

Up ahead, Greg Lestrade was talking on the phone, one finger jammed in his ear to block out the roar of the nearby traffic. He spotted them almost immediately.

“I was startin’ to think you weren't gonna turn up,” he said to Sherlock, as he tucked his phone back into his coat.

“Yes, well, slight change of plan,” Sherlock replied. Molly could see that he was already starting to assess the immediate area around them. She watched him glance upwards at the adjacent building, before tilting his head and considering the orange markers near their feet.

“Yes, well, I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble if I don't get this road open again soon,” Greg mimicked, pointedly, but good-naturedly.

“Molly's here,” Sherlock said, his hand waving vaguely in her direction while his eyes were still fixed on the ground.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Greg replied, sharing what seemed like a conspiratorial smile with her. “Hi Molly. Didn't expect to see you doing this gig again. And on a Saturday, too - I 'ope he's making it worth your while.”

Molly saw Sherlock freeze for a split-second, just as she felt a blush rising in her cheeks.

“John and Mary couldn't make it,” she said, her fingers tangling in the strap of her bag. “I'm just-”

“Helping,” Sherlock interjected, before Molly could think of something better; something that didn’t make her sound like a sad placeholder.

“Well, good to see you, anyway,” Greg continued. “Where’s your fella today?”

Molly half-expected Sherlock to chime in with something about making the tea or typing, but he was now on his knees on the pavement, scrutinising what looked to be the shattered remains of a mobile phone. She didn’t want to think too closely about the fact that today she had blatantly just swapped one man who worked unsociable hours for another; or the inconvenient truth that while she had seized the opportunity to join Sherlock today, she had yet to take up Tom’s offers of coming into the constituency office to see where he worked.

“Working,” she said as quickly and neutrally as possible, before spotting an opportunity to change course. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Does this mean it’s a murder investigation?”

Greg rolled his eyes.

“Pretty certain it was an accident, but there was an ‘interesting feature’ that I thought His Nibs might like to take a look at,” he said. “Dead man’s name was Dean Spencer, twenty-four. Worked as a roofer, but he didn’t die on the job. This happened early hours of the morning.”

“Did he fall from a window?” Molly queried, looking up at the building. Above the ground level shops rose at least eight storeys of smart-looking city real estate, but there were no balconies.

“He was indulging in his hobby,” Sherlock said, standing up quickly. He came to stand beside Molly, holding his phone so that she could see the screen. He had the Instagram app open, and was scrolling through photo after photo, some self-portraits, some taken by a person unseen, but all showing a young man atop a towering London building at either dusk or dawn.

“Dean Spencer also went by the name of Bad Altitude,” Sherlock elaborated. “He was an urban climber - or builderer, if you want to use the ungainly parlance of the urban climbing community.”

“There’s an urban climbing community?” Molly asked, looking up at him with one eyebrow raised. They were standing so close together that she could feel the puff of Sherlock’s breath against her temple.

“Bunch of idiots,” Greg put in. “People spot them, call the police, but they’re long gone by the time the patrols get there.”

“Well, Mr Spencer at least had the good grace to stick around,” Sherlock commented. “Although it’s possibly a little late for a police caution. I take it the ‘interesting feature’ of which you speak, Garth, is above our heads?”

He stepped back, Molly moving with him to see what Sherlock was indicating to. He reached into his pocket and unfolded the smallest set of binoculars that Molly had ever seen, offering them to her. She heard Greg scoff with amusement.

“Hark at Inspector Gadget here.”

“Eight floors up, fourth window along,” Sherlock said to Molly, ignoring the interruption (and another cultural reference she was fairly sure had passed him by - although Molly was fairly sure it was going to quietly amuse _her_ on and off all day).

Molly put the binoculars to her eyes, scanning the identical windows. She felt Sherlock's hand on her forearm, gently directing her to the right place. It was gone almost as soon as she had registered the light, warm pressure there.

Her eyes came to rest on one window in particular, which was almost entirely filled with a neon pink ‘?’

“We wouldn’t ‘ave known it was anything, but the company who owns that office called it in,” Lestrade said.

“So Dean Spencer was a graffiti artist, too?” Molly asked, frowning.

“Well, we’re assumin’ the two things are linked,” Greg shrugged. “The timeline fits. That question mark wasn’t there when the office was locked up at eight o’clock last night.”

Molly looked at Sherlock, whose eyes were once again fixed on his phone. His eyes flicked rapidly back and forth across the screen, in time with his thumb.

“Dean Spencer wasn’t a graffiti artist,” he muttered. “If he was, this social media account would be full of bragging photographs of the locations he’d sprayed.”

“Nothing there?” Molly queried, peering over his arm at the phone. It was an effort not to take in a lungful of ‘essence of Sherlock’ as she did so; that soap and sandalwood musk, with undertones of fag smoke and extra strong mints. She really shouldn’t like it as much as she did.

“No graffiti, but there _are_ dozens of photographs just from this week - every building he climbed. And they all face south.”

“Face south?” Greg asked.

“The angle of the sunrise,” Molly murmured; she hadn’t really planned to say that out loud, and she looked up, expecting to see a peeved-looking Sherlock, aggrieved that his thunder had been stolen.

But instead, he was looking down at her, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his mouth. It only lasted a second.

“Exactly,” he said briskly. “So we need to identify those buildings.”

“Why?” Greg asked. “Is that gonna tell us how Dean Spencer died?”

Sherlock was furiously scrolling through the photos again, and looked up.

“Oh, well, if that’s all you want to know: he fell off a ten-storey building onto solid concrete.”

Molly bit down on a smile, while Greg gave a sarcastic laugh.

“How he died is the boring bit,” Sherlock continued. “Even Scotland Yard could conceivably have solved that one. But _why_ he died, what he was doing when it happened - that’s where this case might be _just_ interesting enough to justify dragging me away from Mrs Hudson’s full English breakfast. Find out who else has reported graffiti in the past few days, and call me when you have some more locations.”

“Graffiti?” Greg repeated, sounding both incredulous and slightly exasperated. “Yeah, not really my division.”

“We’re looking for a very specific set of circumstances,” Sherlock replied, returning his phone to his pocket and pulling on his gloves again. “Central London postcodes, all north of the river, nothing below about the eighth floor, and likely all sprayed with a single character. Something tells me that people who spend over two-thousand pounds a month on rent are going to be quick to complain about something obscuring their expensive view.”

“So what is this?” Greg said, digging his hands into his pockets. “Some kind of dare-gone-wrong?”

Molly had been wondering the same thing, although she was starting to formulate a theory of her own; it was hard not to, it was almost infectious.

“I have a couple of ideas,” Sherlock replied.

“Which you’re not going to share with me and make my job easier.”

Sherlock frowned, looking genuinely perplexed for a moment.

“Where would be the fun in that?”

“You know what’s not fun? Spending my Saturday combing through minor criminal damage reports,” Greg said. He jabbed a gloved finger in Sherlock’s direction. “This had better be good.”

“Molly and I will be in touch,” Sherlock said, and Molly couldn’t help but startle slightly when she felt his hand low at the small of her back, barely touching her, but still leading her away from the scene. She shouldered her bag, and concentrated hard on not tripping over her own feet.

“Where are you going, then?” Greg called after them, echoing the exact thought that Molly was having but hadn’t yet got around to articulating.

“Here,” Sherlock said, swinging around and brandishing a photo on his phone screen. “This one I recognise. This is where we start.”

As soon as they started to head away from the scene of the accident, Sherlock stuck out his hand to hail a cab.

“So, where’s this building, then?” Molly ventured to ask. “The one you recognise.”

“It’s part of King’s College,” he said, distractedly, as the taxi pulled in towards the kerb. “I once hid from Mycroft on the roof there. Had plenty of time and opportunity to admire the Georgian architecture.”

Molly smiled, climbing into the cab as Sherlock held open the door. The moment they were seated, Sherlock lent forwards to address the driver.

“Liverpool Street Station, please,” he said, before relaxing back into his seat.

“W-what?” Molly said reflexively. “I thought you said-?...That’s in the opposite direction from King’s.”

“Lestrade will be ages,” Sherlock replied. “He’s very dependable in that regard; something that I’ve used to my advantage many times. We’ve got plenty of time, and I need to make a stop elsewhere. You don’t mind, do you?”

Molly looked across at him. She had assumed the question was rhetorical - consultation not being one of Sherlock’s strong suits - and was surprised to see that he looked slightly hesitant, apparently expecting an answer. It was a bit of an afterthought, considering that they were now being spirited away at high speed along Queen Victoria Street in the direction of the station, but Molly figured she should probably take what she could get.

“No, it’s fine,” she replied. “But why the station?”

He was flicking through the contents of his phone again, and eventually held up the screen, bearing three separate photographs. Molly leaned across the cab for a closer look; a round-faced but well-groomed man in his forties, a woman who was slightly older, and a young girl of six or seven years old. She wasn’t even going to attempt to work out where this was going - particularly as Sherlock was practically vibrating in his seat, clearly anxious to tell her.

“They’ve all contacted me in the past week,” he said. “And they all claim to have lost the exact same item.”

He flipped up the collar of his coat, and settled into his corner of the cab.

“ _We_ are about to go and find it.”

And as determined as Molly was to be unmoved and blasé about all this - and unaffected by the man sitting beside her - the traitorous butterflies in her stomach reminded her that she was really, really terrible at self-deception.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He was surprised that Molly seemed scandalised at this level of illegality, given the fourteen laws she had knowingly broken when helping him to fake his death two years ago..."
> 
> As they wait for the case to develop, Sherlock involved Molly in a second investigation...

It was possible that Lestrade’s dead urban climber wasn’t going to be as interesting as Sherlock had hoped, but since the post-Christmas rush petered out (the festive season could always be relied upon for a few good murders), he hadn’t exactly been spoiled for choice when it came to cases. It was good to be doing _something_ , and investigations took him out and about **,** around the city, giving his body a workout as well as his mind.  

On the subject of Molly’s company, he was still reserving judgement. While he didn’t have a problem with it _per se_ (not that he would admit that to Mary), he couldn’t help but worry slightly that she was... a distraction. She wasn’t doing anything that other people might construe as distracting, but Sherlock was concerned about what it might be doing to _him;_ he had missed things during the Moran case, easy things, and it mortified him to consider that it was because he had been so hyper-aware of Molly’s presence. And if _that_ was embarrassing, it was nothing compared to his fear that it was because he derived some sort of insipid thrill from her reactions to him - a feedback loop of gratification, somehow different to anything he experienced when he was with John.

The taxi dropped them outside the station, and Sherlock led the way across the concourse to the left luggage office, outside of which was a long bank of lockers of varying sizes. He glanced across at the customer service desk.

“If I could just ask you to stand to my left, Molly,” he said, as he dug into his pocket.

“Erm, okay,” she replied, uncertainly, but nevertheless complying. A woman of five-foot, four-inches could only provide one with a certain level of protective cover, but Sherlock was fairly sure it would only be needed briefly.

He had removed his lock pick from his kit during the taxi ride, and now he applied it to locker number seventeen.

“Sherlock! What are you-” Molly hissed (although thankfully without moving from her position). “Whose locker is this?”

“Client’s,” he told her, twisting the pick to the left, where he could feel the mechanism starting to give. He was surprised that Molly seemed scandalized at this level of illegality, given the fourteen laws she had knowingly broken when helping him to fake his death two years ago.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Molly shift her weight from one foot to another.

“Yes, but if it belongs to a client, why didn’t they just give you the key?” she asked, a note of heavy scepticism in her voice.

“I like to keep my hand in,” Sherlock replied, just as the lock gave an audible (and deeply satisfying) click, and the door swung slightly open. “Don’t want to get rusty.”

Judging by the look on Molly’s face, he wasn’t sure that she was buying it - in fact, he was certain she wasn’t - but Sherlock wasn’t ready, at this stage, to do any sort of reveal where this case was concerned. Where was the magic if you could see how the machine was working the whole time?

Keeping the view of the locker obscured, Sherlock reached in and drew out a large, slightly battered shoebox. He could feel Molly tentatively moving closer, checking the coast was clear before she gave in to her curiosity.

“Is there room for it in your bag?” Sherlock asked, carefully closing the locker. It was a stupid question; the duffel bag that Molly insisted on toting about with her could comfortably accommodate a medium-sized dog, two full changes of clothes, and a generous picnic lunch.

“This bag?” Molly said, gripping the strap. “This bag that you’ve made fun of before?”

Sherlock sighed.

“Now, Molly, I might have-”

“Men always complain about women’s bags, but then assume they can put whatever they like in there,” she continued, furrowing her brow at him.

Sherlock wondered momentarily wondered whether Molly might be trying to make a more general point about male entitlement (or, more interestingly, expressing exasperation over the conduct of The Fiancé), but right now, they were standing in the middle of a very busy railway station, surrounded by CCTV cameras and holding what London Transport Police would probably tediously deem to be stolen goods. Although, in fairness, he wasn’t the first person to steal it - or even the second.

“Your bag is highly practical and...timelessly fashionable,” Sherlock offered. He had to concede the former point at least, given the same bag’s previous role in smuggling body parts out of Bart’s Hospital.

Sighing, Molly shifted the bag off her shoulder, raising an eyebrow at him while she held it open. Sherlock met her eyebrow with a gracious smile.

Shoebox safely stowed, they started back towards the station exit. As they emerged into the bright winter sunshine, heading back towards the taxi rank, Molly obviously felt there was a sufficient distance between them and the scene of their larceny to start seeking more information.

“It isn’t going to explode, or, I don’t know...leak?”

Sherlock gave a brief snort of laughter.

“Take a look if you like.”

By now they were in the short queue for cabs and - giving Sherlock a suspicious glance first - Molly opened her bag and cautiously lifted the lid of the shoebox a couple of inches. He watched as the bridge of her nose wrinkled in confusion, the way he had observed numerous times when working side-by-side together in the lab (and which he tried not to be too affected by).

“Sherlock, is that...is that a _Barbie_?”

“Mm,” he confirmed, opening the door of the taxi that had just pulled around in front of them. “A fortieth anniversary Barbie doll, to be exact, released in 1999. It’s worth at least eighty-five thousand dollars.”

At this, Molly jerked her head around to look at him, at the same time as she was clambering into the cab - and her forehead made contact with the doorframe with an audible crack. She swore under her breath and immediately winced with pain; when she had recovered from the initial shock, she looked up at Sherlock with an expression of surprise - and it was only then that Sherlock realised that he had taken her hand in order to steady her. It was an unsettling reflex to say the least.

She mimed a thank-you, her cheeks colouring slightly, and Sherlock withdrew his hand, instead digging it back into his pocket to find his phone, as the two of them settled into the cab.

“I was going to ask how that’s possible,” Molly asked, once they were on their way. “How it could possibly be worth so much?”

“Probably because it’s wearing a-hundred-and-sixty diamonds made by De Beers,” he replied, sliding a glance Molly’s way in order to witness her inevitable astonishment. “So you might want to hold on to your bag.”

After gaping at him for a moment, she carefully drew the box out of her bag again and lifted the lid. Sherlock had previously only seen photographs of their quarry, but it seemed to be as per the pictures - a plastic doll with long brown hair, wearing some sort of chiffony skirt thing, plus a ridiculous bikini top and a belt, both of which were studded with diamonds that - considering their worth - were surprisingly underwhelming. Not an adjective that could be used in relation to the diamonds adorning Molly’s left hand, Sherlock reflected - he could think of plenty of alternative words for _that_ piece of jewellery. Garish. Obtrusive. Gaudy. Tasteless. Unbefitting.

...Disconcerting.

Disturbed by his train of thought, Sherlock resolved to change the subject - _surely Lestrade should have been in touch by now?_ \- when Molly spoke ahead of him.

“Well, she’s clearly not dressed for London in February,” she said, with a wry laugh. “I feel cold just looking at her.”

And that was the point at which Sherlock knew he was doomed to spend the remaining cab ride trying to rid himself of the mental fixation of Molly dressed in nothing but a tiny bejewelled bikini top and chiffon skirt.

000000000000

 

“You can wait here,” Sherlock told the driver, as they pulled up on Victoria Embankment, just opposite King’s College. “This will only take a minute.”

He swept out of the cab and immediately crossed over to embankment side of the road, which would afford him a better view. A few seconds behind him, Molly was nervously cutting through the traffic, clutching tightly to her bag in a slightly comical manner.

It took him only seconds to spot it, the bright streaks on glass high up above street level; the binoculars confirmed it (Steiner were military-grade, and well worth the price tag, however much Lestrade might scoff).

“Is that an M?” Molly asked, shielding her eyes and peering up at the building.

“Mm-hm.”

He was already starting back across the street when his phone rang, the words ‘Scotland Yard’ flashing up on the screen. Finally! Molly had caught back up to him by the time he had established that Lestrade had made some progress, and Sherlock reluctantly switched his phone to speaker for her benefit.

“I’ve got a letter L for your little game of Scrabble,” the Detective Inspector said, going heavy on the sarcasm even by his standards. “Eight floors up. Same spray paint.”

“Where?” Sherlock asked.

“The Corinthia Hotel in Whitehall,” Lestrade replied. “Four nights ago, but the manager’s still livid. You gonna tell me what this is yet?”

“Mmm, still working on it,” Sherlock replied. “But I need more data, so you'd best get back to your reports, Gerard.”

“Gerard?!”

The DI's voice caused Sherlock's phone to buzz with distortion.

“God's sake, Sherlock, do you honestly think anyone in their right mind would name their kid Gerard Lestrade?” he said, before adding. “Sorry, scratch that - I'd forgotten that someone named their kids _Mycroft and Sherlock_.”

“Yes, well, I never claimed my parents were in their right minds,” Sherlock replied, archly.

“Is Molly there?”

“Hi Greg,” Molly put in, leaning into Sherlock's space.

“Give him a kick for me, will you?” Lestrade continued. “Preferably up the bum, when he's down on the ground looking for something.”

“I'll have to catch up with him first,” Molly replied, shooting Sherlock a look, and causing him a momentary spark of guilt. He’d always thought that John was just disagreeably slow, but perhaps leg-length _did_ have something to do with it after all.

“I hope he's at least buying you lunch?”

“Goodbye, Lestrade,” Sherlock interjected. They were straying into 'chat’, which was no good to anybody - well, not to him at any rate, and particularly as it seemed to be firmly at his expense.

“Oi, oi, wait!” Lestrade said irritably. “You want one of my team to meet you at The Corinthia?”

“Nope, no need,” Sherlock replied, prompting a questioning look from Molly, too. “We’ve already got all the information we require.”

“Have we?” Lestrade said. “Oh, right, well that’s okay then. Where _are_ you off to now, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“To return some lost property,” Sherlock told him.

“Yeah? Well, if you happen to find my professional dignity anywhere, I’d be grateful if you could return that, too,”

Molly gave a sympathetic laugh, and Sherlock rolled his eyes as he ended the call. Honestly, he’d known Lestrade for years and still didn’t understand why, when the DI asked for his assistance, he would invariably end up with a litany of complaints.

They returned to the cab, and Sherlock gave the driver the address of the next destination, in Lambeth. As they started off, Sherlock sat back and closed his eyes, clearing his thoughts until a street map of London filled his mind’s eye; he started plotting the location of the graffiti tags, assigning each letter and symbol, and calling up and almost instantly dismissing several possible hypotheses. When he slowly opened his eyes, as they were leaving Waterloo Bridge, he saw that Molly was writing something in a memo pad, which she had presumably conjured from her cavernous duffel bag. When she caught him looking, a light blush passed over her cheeks.

“Just...notes,” she smiled. “Trying to figure out what it means as well; the letters, the places.”

“Any theories?” Sherlock asked. He was pleased that on this occasion, she was taking notes for her own benefit rather than for any perceived need to chronicle the case they were working on. He shuddered to think what John would call this one.

Molly was looking at him from beneath a slightly furrowed brow, as though unsure about whether he was seriously asking.

“A code, maybe?” she ventured. “Some kind of message? Perhaps the climber wasn’t just a climber after all - I mean, maybe he was working for some sort of covert group or organisation.”

It wasn’t a _terrible_ theory - but more than that, the fact that Molly was intrigued by the case, that it had drawn her in to the point that she was actually theorising about its outcome was somehow... invigorating. It was the same response, he realised, that he had when Molly was so curious about the science of one of his cases - an abnormal test result, a medical contradiction - that, without even asking him, she would set aside whatever she was doing in the lab and dive straight into the casework. Sherlock had a horrible feeling that The Woman might have been on to something when she said that brainy was the new se-

-“Or maybe someone’s trying to tell _me_ something,” Molly said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts at was probably a very good moment.

“Sorry, what?” he said quickly.

“Well, the M and now the L,” she grinned. “It’s kind of heading in that direction, don’t you think? If the next letter is an O, L or Y, I’m going to start thinking that Mike is using a really elaborate way of asking me to work the Bank Holiday again.”

Sherlock returned the smile with a chuff of laughter. The jokes didn’t get any better, but he was quietly pleased that she still made them, despite his suggestions to the contrary. He was pleased Molly hadn’t stopped doing _anything_ despite his suggestions to the contrary. Although of course, if she _had_ , there wouldn’t have been an ugly great engagement ring on her finger waiting for him when he came back from the dead.

At that moment, his coat pocket buzzed with a text alert, and Sherlock retrieved his phone. Once he’d read Lestrade’s curt message, he held out the screen so Molly could see it:

**Shell Building, corner of Strand, overlooking river: O**

They exchanged a look, both raising an eyebrow simultaneously.

“You should tell Stamford you want double pay,” Sherlock said. “And to use email next time.” 

When Molly reacted with soft laughter, Sherlock suddenly experienced a strange surge of warmth to his core, which he immediately tried to will away; it was alarming to see how easily human beings could be made to do very stupid things in exchange for a certain type of reward.

“So, which of your three clients are we going to see in Lambeth?” Molly asked, her words once again providing a welcome diversion from the more discomfiting workings of his subconscious.

“Care to make a deduction?” he asked, flicking through his phone until he could show her the three photographs again.

“No, but I’ll take a guess,” she replied. “And if I get it right, I think you should carry my bag for the rest of the day.”

Sherlock smirked.

“And if you get it wrong?”

“You can have the next spare spleen I come across.”

Sherlock cocked his head to one side. He was fairly sure she would guess incorrectly, but he wasn’t entirely sure he was prepared to risk the humiliation of Molly’s bag in exchange for one of the human body’s more extraneous organs.

“Mmm. Make it a liver and I accept,” he told her.

It was testament to the apathy and indifference of London’s cab drivers that their current topic of conversation had failed to summon even a slightly concerned eyebrow in the rear-view mirror, and now the car slowed as they turned into a crescent of squat, red-brick terraced houses, arranged around a slightly neglected communal garden.

“Time’s up,” Sherlock said to Molly, as he handed some notes through the partition of the cab. He was already mulling over the possible experiments for which a healthy liver would provide a very interesting test-subject.

Molly glanced around her surroundings for a moment, scrunching her nose slightly, trying to size up which of the three clients were the likely inhabitant of this particular address. She looked down at the screen of his phone again quickly, then up again with a resolute smile, ready, apparently, to deliver her verdict.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to MizJoely, who suggested - via tumblr - the ludicrously expensive Barbie as a potential case for Sherlock! :-)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Undeterred by the lack of obvious welcome, the cat was now stalking around Sherlock’s lap in circles, claws snagging on suit trousers that Molly suspected cost more than her monthly mortgage bill."
> 
> Molly and Sherlock arrive at the house of his next client...

In more than fifteen years of living in London, this little enclave within the city was somewhere Molly had never ventured. With its neat, flat-fronted Victorian terraces, each seemingly with a different shade of brightly-painted front door, it was like London from a bygone age, and hard to believe they were less than a mile from the South Bank.

Sherlock had paused before ringing the doorbell, apparently examining the doorframe, running a gloved finger along the paintwork and around the Yale lock. And now, they were being led through the narrow hallway to the back sitting room of one such house by Sherlock’s client. The room, like the other areas of the house that Molly had glimpsed, was clean and neatly-arranged, if slightly dated in its decor (not that Molly felt she could judge, given that she lived with that horrible avocado bathroom suite for four years before it finally got too depressing for her). It took her a few moments to notice the tabby cat that had been curled up in a wicker chair, and the cat apparently noticed her around the same time, because it dropped lazily down onto the floor and padded towards her, immediately curling itself around her ankles.

“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s just Oscar - you’re not allergic, are you?” the woman asked, moving to retrieve the cat.

“No, it’s fine,” Molly replied, stooping to pet the cat’s head. “I’ve got one of my own.”

Several times over the years she’d thought about getting a companion for Toby, but had worried (in opposition to her feminist sensibilities) about the number of cats a single woman had to have before she officially turned into a Cat Lady. But now that the being single thing was no longer applicable, maybe the time had come to actually do it. And Toby could do with an ally against Tom’s dog, Rufus. Sorry, _their_ dog, Rufus.

A good few moments must have passed while Molly indulged Oscar, and when she eventually straightened up, Sherlock was watching her with an expression of mild exasperation. Making friends with his clients’ pets clearly wasn’t part of his usual methods of working. She stifled a smile.

“Mrs Armitage, you recently suffered a theft, I understand?” he said, his hands grasped tightly behind his back as he took a couple of strides towards the bookshelves over by the chimney breast.

“Yes, that’s right,” the woman replied, a little hesitantly. “Please do sit down, by the way,”

She hurried across the room to clear a stack of files, exercise books and an assortment of pens from the small sofa. Molly could see that Sherlock was reluctant, but she could also tell that he was trying to maintain his client’s trust, and so he acquiesced. A second after they both took a seat on the sofa, it became apparent that some of the springs were long gone; the sofa seemed almost to fold in on itself, and Molly had to grab the arm to prevent herself from ending up in Sherlock’s lap. Just to add to the day’s other indignities.

“Can I get you both a tea?” Mrs Armitage asked.

The suggestion suddenly made Molly realise just how much she could do with a cuppa, but before she could say anything - and probably deliberately so, she suspected - Sherlock had declined the offer. Their host pulled the chair out from under the desk in the corner, and took a seat opposite them, folding her hands in her lap. She smiled nervously, her eyes flitting between the two of them.

“You’re a teacher, Mrs Armitage?” Sherlock asked - or rather he used the intonation of the question, but Molly knew he rarely asked questions to which he didn’t at least strongly suspect the answer.

“Oh - yes,” she replied, a little surprised. She gestured to the jumble of things she had removed from the sofa and stacked on the desk. “You caught me in the middle of my marking, I’m afraid. My Year Threes are learning about the solar system.”

Molly stifled another smile, feeling Sherlock stiffen slightly beside her.

“And you weren’t at home when the robbery occurred?” he continued, unabated.

“I got back from the shops and the house was just...ransacked,” she replied, with a sigh. “This room in particular. Drawers emptied out, books all thrown on the floor, just...mess, everywhere.”

Sherlock gave what sounded like a sympathetic hum, bridging his fingers underneath his chin.

“And you found that this item, this... _doll_ was missing,” he continued.

She nodded.

“Yes. It was stupid, really. I never should have kept it somewhere it was so easy to find,” the woman said.

“Was anything else stolen in the break-in?”

“Not really; nothing worth anything,” she said. “A few necklaces and brooches, but they were just costume jewellery, really.”

At this point, Mrs Armitage’s cat sprung up onto the arm of the sofa closest to Sherlock, and immediately proceeded to stroll onto his lap. Molly looked from the cat to Sherlock, watching Sherlock’s expression as he battled the urge to forcibly propel the beloved Oscar from his knee, and instead maintain a rapport with the client. Undeterred by the lack of obvious welcome, the cat was now stalking around Sherlock’s lap in circles, claws snagging on suit trousers that Molly suspected cost more than her monthly mortgage bill. With the cat’s tail now swaying inches from Sherlock’s nose, Molly decided it might be time to take pity on them both; she gently reached over and scooped the animal into her own lap, where it immediately settled down and offered itself up for stroking.

“My husband wasn’t keen on them either,” Mrs Armitage said, with an expression of recognition.

It took a moment for Molly to realise what was being inferred. She shot a glance towards Sherlock, and then back to the client again.

“Oh, um, no, that’s-” she began. “Earlier, I meant, _I_ have a cat. We-”

She wasn’t sure where she was going to go with the rest of that sentence, but thankfully, just as her cheeks were threatening to flash-fry the rest of her face, Sherlock interjected. Although Molly was fairly sure it was less about saving her blushes, and more about his dislike of superfluous chat.

“Out of interest, Mrs Armitage, how did you come to own this particular doll?” he asked. “I assume you must be a collector?”

The same thought had crossed Molly’s mind, but nothing about Laurel Armitage or her house seemed to support that idea.

“No,” she replied. “It’s funny; I bought it from a second-hand toy shop years ago, for my niece, but by the time I actually saw her to give it to her, she’d grown out of playing with dolls.”

“But you knew it was worth a lot of money?” Sherlock prompted.

“Not then I didn’t. That happened later - quite by accident. I didn’t tell anyone, and I didn’t know quite what to do with it, to be honest - it all seemed a bit ridiculous. I suppose in the end I thought I would hang onto it, in case the money came in handy at some point.” She gave a rueful smile. “In hindsight, I probably should have just sold it there and then.”

“In your email, you mentioned a ransom note,” Sherlock continued. “Left behind by the thieves. May we see it?”

Mrs Armitage got to her feet, pausing a moment, brow furrowed, as though trying to remember something. While she was searching through her desk drawer, Molly looked across at Sherlock, who in turn aimed a dark stare at Oscar the cat, while attempting to brush cat dander and stray hairs from his trousers (she definitely would _not_ be mentioning the tiny hole in the fabric that she had spotted, given how close it was to his crotch).

The client returned, unfolding a piece of white paper before handing it to Sherlock. He glanced at it for a second before passing it across to Molly; it was a regular piece of printer paper, bearing a typed note:

_Your property is in a safe place_

_£10,000 gets you a location and a locker key_

_You’ll be hearing from us_

“And have you?” Sherlock asked. “Heard from them?”

Mrs Armitage shook her head.

“Even if I did, I don’t have ten thousand pounds to give away.”

“Have you told the police?” Molly asked, setting the ransom note aside. The more time that passed, the more she was starting to see what drove Sherlock to take this case; there was definitely something shady going on.

“I didn’t think it was worth it,” the woman shrugged. “The police don’t tend to bother very much with burglaries these days.”

“Even for such an expensive item?” Molly replied. It suddenly occurred to her that she might be trampling all over some careful line of questioning that Sherlock had planned, but when she glanced across at him, he just seemed to be awaiting his client’s answer.

“They would probably just ask me why I hadn’t had the doll properly insured,” she sighed. “Which is why, Mr Holmes, I came to you instead.”

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully, leaning back on the sofa and crossing one leg over the other.

“It’s quite a story, Mrs Armitage,” he said. “In fact, your story has inspired me to come up with one of my own, and you’ll have to forgive me, but I think might be even better. Would you like to hear it? Of course you would - it really is pretty good. Mrs Armitage, your home was not burgled - the original lock mechanism is still in place, and there is no evidence whatsoever of damage to your front door, except where your dim-witted pet has clawed at the paintwork to gain entry, despite a perfectly good cat-flap at the back of the property.”

Despite the direction in which this story was heading, Molly couldn’t help but feel a protective pang towards the cat still curled up on her lap. For his part, Oscar had turned his head to watch Sherlock as he got to his feet (leaving Molly to recover her balance on the blancmange-like settee).

“Also, you said that the robbers threw your books on the floor, but these books,” Sherlock continued, sliding a volume from the shelf - “are still covered with a noticeable layer of dust; much more than a fortnight’s worth. Three months ago, you sold your car, and until a few weeks ago, you were advertising for a lodger - not the actions, I would surmise, of a person who was sitting on a highly valuable collectable.”

Molly watched the woman's posture instantly change, her fingers digging into the cushion on her chair.

“I...I sold my car because I barely used it,” she said, blinking rapidly. “And yes, I was thinking about letting out my spare room, because I've never got used to living by myself. That doesn't mean-”

“Mrs Armitage, only five of these dolls were ever produced,” Sherlock continued. “One of them is owned by a New York socialite, another is in the collection of a Saudi prince. And a month ago, one of them was sold at a London auction house to this man…”

He held up the screen of his phone, displaying the photograph Molly had seen earlier; the well-groomed man in his forties.

“Russell Marriott,” Sherlock said. “Who, for reasons best known to himself, has spent almost half a million pounds on Barbie dolls over the past fifteen years. He contacted me two weeks ago, frustrated with the police’s response to a break-in at his Knightsbridge home, where - amongst various other tasteless knickknacks  - he was robbed of his latest acquisition. So, the question is, Mrs Armitage, how did you orchestrate such an audacious burglary? And where are you keeping the rest of your spoils?”

The drama was too much for the cat, who shot off Molly’s knee and into the kitchen.

“What?!” Mrs Armitage responded. All the colour had drained from her face, and Molly was momentarily worried that she might have to administer medical treatment to an actual, live person. “That wasn’t...I didn’t...how could I have?” Shen floundered around for a moment, and Molly almost felt sorry for her; after all, she knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a very intense Sherlock Holmes stare.

“What I’m telling you is true,” the woman said, once she had recovered herself. “The note I gave you, the locker...”

“Oh, the bit about the locker is true,” Sherlock said, adopting a more airy tone. “Well, partly. But only because _you_ put the doll there.”

Molly heard an audible gasp from the client.

“Your disguise was rubbish - you were clearly recognisable on CCTV,” Sherlock added. “There’s very little that’s more disappointing in my line of work than a mediocre disguise. And if you _will_ use your own computer to type a ransom note, at least make sure your printer doesn’t have a very conspicuous and incriminating fault.” He held up the piece of paper Mrs Armitage had earlier produced. “This has the exact same smudge pattern as the papers you cleared away from your sofa when we arrived.”

He crossed back to the sofa, hoisted up Molly’s bag from its resting place by the foot of the sofa, and like a very posh and well-dressed magician, produced the Barbie doll from its midst.

Mrs Armitage was visibly shaking now, as she raised her hand to cover her mouth.

“You’re a primary school teacher,” Sherlock continued. “I’m going to assume that you recognise this child?”

Again, he held out his phone, this time displaying the photograph of the young girl, her hair in plaits, beaming through a gap in her teeth.

The client nodded, swallowing hard.

“She’s...she’s one of my pupils. Emily.”

“Emily Flynn,” Sherlock said. “You may not have carried out a heist on a mansion in Knightsbridge, but you did steal from a six-year old girl in your care...didn’t you, Mrs Armitage?”

He had lowered himself back onto the sofa again by now, once again adopting a more measured tone with his client (just as well, Molly thought, as very soon she’d probably need a paper bag to breathe into). After a few long moments, where Mrs Armitage looked as though she was in agony, she finally took a deep, shaky breath and took up the story.

“It was a Saturday, a few weeks back,” she said. “The school was having a fayre, the PTA raising money for something-or-other, and it’s more or less expected that staff will give up their weekends to help out, on top of everything else. I was stuck on the second-hand toy stall, and Emily was there with her family, and she picked out the Barbie. I didn’t think anything of it until she came into school on the Monday with the doll, and gave it to me to put in her drawer until break time. I knew immediately that the diamonds were real - my father had a little jewellery shop in Holburn when I was growing up. So...I took it.”

Sherlock flicked through his phone and Molly saw him pull up an email.

He cleared his throat, stagily, and read, in a slightly sing-song voice.

“‘Dear Mr Sherlock. Please can you help me find my doll? I lost it at school. I saw my teacher put it in my drawer, but then it was gone. Mummy says I’m not allowed to take toys to school anymore, because I don’t look after my things. Maybe there is a black hole in my classroom?’”

Molly watched as Mrs Armitage dropped her face to her hands.

“Black hole,” Sherlock added. “Well, at least she’s learning about the solar system, so I suppose you should be commended for that, at least.”

Molly shot Sherlock a look; aside from the fact that the nearest black hole was something like three thousand light years away, his comments weren’t helping.

“You needed the money?” Molly said. “And you saw the opportunity?”

Mrs Armitage sighed.

“Do you know how difficult it is to live in London on a teacher’s salary?” she said. “And I have debts, debts I’ve never told anyone about. And I thought...it was a _doll_ \- a six year old child wouldn’t care if it cost six pounds or sixty thousand pounds. She probably has a box of dolls just like it at home - except _they_ wouldn’t pay off my second mortgage.”

“So why all this?” Molly asked, slowly. “Why pretend you’d been robbed? Why ask for help?”

“Because she knew about the theft from Russell Marriott’s home, Molly,” Sherlock said, in a gentle tone. “Didn’t you, Mrs Armitage?”  
  
She nodded again, hugging her arms around her middle.

“It was reported in the press,” Sherlock said. “Now that you no longer drive to work, you read the free newspaper on the bus, and you saw an article about the burglary. And then you panicked - not only because it confirmed you were in possession of stolen goods - _twice_ stolen goods, technically - but also because even if you _were_ able to somehow return the doll, you would be back to square one. So you needed to come up with a way to both keep the doll _and_ paint yourself as an innocent victim...and of course, you couldn’t know that Russell Marriott would also become a client of mine.”

It was apparent from the woman’s reactions that Sherlock’s deductions were more or less spot-on; she now wore a resigned, anguished look - and more than that, Molly could tell, she was mortified, too.

“But you have to believe that I have absolutely no idea how the doll ended up on the toy stall, Mr Holmes, I really don’t,” she pleaded.

“I do believe you,” Sherlock told her, matter-of-factly, getting to his feet again. “And on the basis of this little experiment, I wouldn’t advise a change in career.”

Realising that Sherlock considered his work here done, Molly scooped up her bag and followed him towards the door.

“Are...are you going to tell the school?” Mrs Armitage suddenly blurted. “I could lose my job, and then I would lose my pension and I-”

“It wouldn’t be worth the paperwork for the police,” Sherlock replied. “And besides, Russell Marriott simply wants his property back, and probably won’t ask questions.”

With that, Sherlock swept out into the hallway, leaving Molly faltering for an awkward moment, left alone with Sherlock’s client. She sometimes wondered at what point in his life Sherlock had decided to dispense with the beginnings and endings of conversations.

She and Mrs Armitage looked at each other for a few seconds, each seemingly unsure what to expect from the other.

“Okay, so…” Molly said, shifting from one foot to the other. “I...um, I really like your cat. Thank you.”

Molly briefly clocked the baffled expression on the woman’s face before she quickly turned and followed Sherlock out of the house; if she was cringing any harder, she would probably rupture a nerve in her face. And she wasn’t sure what possessed her to _thank_ the client - it was probably just a politeness reflex that she’d never been able to shake (not something that troubled Sherlock, obviously; Molly was starting to see why John had such a short fuse around him).

Sherlock was waiting outside on the pavement for her, turning his head when she approached.

“Molly, you didn’t just compliment our client on her cat, did you?”

“No,” Molly replied quickly, not meeting his eye.

She heard him utter a short, sceptical “hm”. Although it occurred to her, with a smile, that Sherlock had described Mrs Armitage as _their_ client. As they started to walk, Molly shrugged her bag off her shoulder and held it out to Sherlock, who looked quizzically at her at first, before realisation dawned and he instead rolled his eyes.

“Oh, we’re really doing this, are we?” he sighed.

Gone were the days, though, when she would be cowed by his condescension. Instead, Molly continued to nudge the bag at his hip until he had no choice but to take it.

“I guessed right,” she smiled. “And we had a deal, Sherlock.”

Raising his eyes to the heavens momentarily, Sherlock grasped her duffel bag in his fist as though he was carrying a particularly malodorous rubbish bag out to the bin (something Molly was fairly sure he’d never done, unless on the orders of Mrs Hudson).

“As it’s a pleasant day, I was going to suggest we walk part of the way,” he said. “But in light of _this_ ” - he brandished the bag, with a faint expression of disgust on his face - “I think another taxi might be in order.”

Molly smiled; there was a possibility she might put him out of his misery a little later on, but for now, she was enjoying this far too much.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sherlock closed his eyes for another moment, his brain picking out each of the known letters and hurtling them into place on the map of London that was a permanent fixture of his Mind Palace. But frustratingly, it wasn’t coming to him. 
> 
> “It’s a message of some description, and it’s all a matter of perspective,” he said, his eyes snapping open. “The letters seem random and scattered, but someone was supposed to be able to see the message perfectly from a certain vantage point.”"
> 
> Sherlock and Molly receive more pieces of the puzzle, and Sherlock considers in what possible context Tom could remotely be considered 'best'...

Sherlock had fully expected that their next move would be to return the doll to its owner and draw a line under what was one of the more ludicrous cases of his recent career (although, admittedly, the ludicrous ones had the tendency to be quite lucrative). As they walked back towards the main road, he glanced across at Molly a couple of times; she was doing very little, he noticed, to hide her delight at having won their so-called bet. Sherlock adopted an expression of weary resignation, which felt entirely appropriate for being forced to carry a slightly shabby duffel bag through the streets of London - a bag that he was fairly certain Molly’s cat had recently used as a bed.

But in spite of this, as Molly walked beside him, he was aware of feeling something else. The simple act of carrying Molly’s bag seemed to change things, to further alter a dynamic between them that had already shifted even during the course of this day… and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Acknowledging this not-unpleasantness then sparked a further realisation in Sherlock's mind - that The Fiancé presumably did this sort of thing on a regular basis, and didn't need the pretense of a frivolous wager in order to do so.

Shoving that troubling thought to one side, he took out his phone to check on the alert that he had felt vibrate in his pocket. Hopefully it would be Lestrade.

It wasn't.

**Hope you're not missing us too much. Has Molly chucked you in the river yet?**

It was Mary. She had added one of those infantile winking face thingys at the end.

The second message was a photo, captioned (rather unnecessarily, he thought) **Look at this orangery!!!!!**

There was surely a point at which additional exclamation marks failed to add anything to the sentiment being expressed?

“Is that Greg?” Molly asked, jolting him out of his thoughts.

“Hm? No,” he replied, looking up. “Mary.”

“Oh!” Molly said, with a measure of surprise. “I meant to ask where she and John are today? You know, with not being able to come with you.”

Sherlock told her, somewhat surprised that Mary had left out that detail during her subterfuge that morning.

“That's exciting,” Molly replied, smiling brightly.

This comment caused Sherlock's eyebrow to rise of its own accord, but he refrained from asking Molly to justify that claim. In the pause that followed, a question leapt into his mind that he immediately quashed - or tried to. _He shouldn’t ask it. What could possibly be gained by asking it? It was idiotic and illogical to ask a question of that nature if you weren’t sure you were going to like the answer. Especially if you suspected that the answer you would like and the answer that would generally be considered right and proper might not be the same thing._

“I suppose you must have been doing the same?” he said, the words tumbling out despite himself (maybe he had sustained some sort of frontal lobe damage at the hands of that Serbian prison guard?)

“What?” Molly said, clearly as surprised as he was by the question.

“Looking at...places,” Sherlock said, keeping his gaze on the road ahead. “Venues…and that sort of thing.”

He chanced another side-glance at Molly, and observed that she appeared hesitant, uncomfortable perhaps.

“Oh... yes…” she said, nodding. “Well...online, anyway...a bit.”

Online wasn't exactly a commitment, was it? The previous night he had spent two hours online browsing coffins, but it didn't mean he had any intention of actually buying one (well, not _much_ intention anyway - he had briefly considered having one installed in Mycroft's house in place of his bed).

“We’ve seen a few nice places,” Molly added, quickly. “But just...not actually in person... yet.”

Sherlock gave a sharp nod to indicate that he understood. Or so Molly would _think_ he did. His frame of reference for this sort of thing was (mercifully) limited, but given that John and Mary had been engaged for only a few months and had already had long enough to select and then change their minds about a venue, was it not a little noteworthy that Molly and The Fiancé were still at the casual internet-browsing stage? As a general rule, he tried not to think too closely about the actual, tangible reality of Molly’s state of betrothal - and this was the perfect example as to why. It made him feel as though it actually mattered to him, that he somehow had some stake in what two other human beings decided to do with their lives.

His phone started to ring, and he snatched it out of his pocket, only slightly encumbered by the bag over his left shoulder.

“How many more?” Sherlock said, as he answered the phone.

“Hello to you, too,” came Lestrade’s somewhat caustic reply.  “You on your own yet?”

Sherlock glanced across at Molly, who was listening expectantly. “No,” he said, briskly. “Molly is right here. We’ve actually passed a very profitable hour or so.”

He heard Lestrade give a snort of laughter down the line.

“If it was anyone else, I’d be worrying what young Tom might think of that,” he said.

Sherlock felt his jaw tighten. He looked at Molly again, walking beside him, hands deep in her coat pockets, some colour in her cheeks from the sharp spring air.

“What have you got for me?” he pressed.

“Believe it or not, another four reports, all from the past few days,” Lestrade said.

“Not bad,” Sherlock replied. “And to think people call the Met lazy and ineffectual.”

“No, _you_ call the Met lazy and ineffectual, you bastard,” Lestrade shot back. There was a pause, before he added, “You want it by email?”

“Please,” Sherlock replied, a small smile playing on his lips.

When he returned his phone to his pocket, Molly turned to him, tucking a escaped strand of hair back behind her ear.

“Change of plan?”

“Change of plan,” Sherlock nodded. “Lestrade has been very industrious. He’s going to send through some details.”

“Oh,” Molly replied. “That’s a shame. I was sort of looking forward to seeing inside the home of an incredibly rich middle-aged man who collects Barbie dolls.”

Her face broke into a smile, part impish, part conspiratorial, and wholly breath-taking. It was all Sherlock could do to stop his own smile giving him away completely.

“Why don’t we stop somewhere while we wait?” he said. “And perhaps you can eat your leftover pasta, so I won’t have to carry it around any longer.”

Molly frowned at him with playful reproval, but five minutes later they were sitting at a picnic table near the South Bank, bright sunshine taking the edge off the gusts of wind coming off the river. Molly had unboxed her fairly extensive packed lunch, and Sherlock was indeed right about the pasta leftovers - and he had also deduced correctly that there had been a bottle of water banging against his ribcage as he carried her bag. But in addition, there was also a small mixed salad, a banana, and some sort of homemade flapjack thing that seemed to set off a siren call to Sherlock’s stomach.

 “Sorry, did you want some?” she asked, making Sherlock suddenly paranoid that he might actually be salivating. “I just thought, you know, with you not eating while you’re working…”

“I’m fine, Molly,” he replied. “Thank you.”

She gave him a sideways glance, as though double-checking, before she started to tuck into her lunch. Sherlock started to flick through his phone, vaguely distracted by the idea that The Fiancé had probably taken the other half of the leftovers with him that morning. Which led to the further thought of Molly and The Fiancé eating dinner together the previous evening, no doubt with a glass or two of wine, and then--

_Ahh, domestic bliss, brother mine_. He could almost hear Mycroft’s sneering voice in his head. If his brain was going to be occupied by thoughts of _this_ nature, it was obvious he couldn’t just sit here while Molly ate her lunch - a distraction was needed. He opened up John’s blog (desperate times, desperatemeasures), and started to pick through the utter bilge that found its way into the inbox, on the off-chance that there was something he could solve in the next fifteen minutes.

“Nice that John asked you to be his Best Man.”

Sherlock looked up; Molly was smiling around a mouthful of food. This topic was scarcely better than the one he’d been trying to chase from his mind - and thematically, far too similar - but he knew he couldn’t ask Molly to just concentrate on eating and be done with it.

“It was something of an inconvenience, given that I had been hoping to avoid the whole event completely” - he caught the look on Molly’s face midway through his reply - “...although I was...moved. Moderately.”

“Well, I know you won’t be short of really good stories for a Best Man speech,” Molly said, snapping the lid back on her empty lunch box. “But if you get stuck, Tom’s been a Best Man a couple of times, and he’s probably got a book hanging around somewhere.”

It was very difficult to hold back the snort of derision that desperately wanted to escape him, particularly when considering the notion that there might be a scenario where Tom would be considered ‘best’ anything. Best on offer, possibly?

“I don’t anticipate the need for a reference book, Molly,” Sherlock said, impressed at his ability to muster a gracious smile. “But thank you anyway.”

She was now picking through the small salad, clearly only on the menu out of misplaced guilt.

“What about everything else?” Molly asked.

Sherlock frowned. “Everything else? You mean the stag do?” he queried. “Because I’m fairly sure that it won’t take too much imagination, planning, encouragement, or even much alcohol, to get John roaringly drunk.”

And because he wasn’t a complete imbecile, he could also manage not to lose two wedding rings during the course of a morning. 

“Well, yeah,” Molly replied. “But I was more thinking about things like organising the ushers, helping with the transport, working out the seating plan.”

Sherlock shot her a sceptical look, suspecting that Molly might be attempting to wind him up, but she was completely straight-faced as she ate the final few leaves of her salad. If John was expecting help with those things, surely he would have said something? He was pretty sure Mary would have.

“Usually, the Best Man and the chief bridesmaid sort out those kind of things together,” Molly continued, adding, after a short pause, “I mean, I don’t know who that’s going to be, so…”

Sherlock had no idea either, but he was struggling to think of any situation where that wouldn’t be unspeakably awful. He wondered how many other loathsome wedding ‘traditions’ he was going to be subjected to, simply as a result of acquiescing to John’s request.

When he looked up, he saw that Molly had made a start on the flapjack. Probably just as well she skipped the banana; once, when she had started to eat a banana in the lab, Sherlock had had to hastily retreat into the supply cupboard under the pretense of needing some more litmus paper.

Just as this embarrassing recollection was starting to take hold, a buzz from Sherlock’s phone signalled that Lestrade’s email had finally arrived.

“What does it say?” Molly asked, leaning in a little closer.

“Four locations,” Sherlock muttered, scanning the email and attempting to pinpoint them in his mind in relation to the previous addresses. “Stretching between Westminster and the City. In fact, one is almost directly across the river from where we are now.”

“And the letters?” Molly said, breaking off a piece of flapjack.

“R, Y, W, E.”

Sherlock closed his eyes for another moment, his brain picking out each of the known letters and hurtling them into place on the map of London that was a permanent fixture of his Mind Palace. But frustratingly, it wasn’t coming to him.

“It’s a message of some description, and it’s all a matter of perspective,” he said, his eyes snapping open. “The letters seem random and scattered, but _someone_ was supposed to be able to see the message perfectly from a certain vantage point.”

Molly reached across the table to her bag, drew out a notebook and pen and opened it to a blank page. Without a word - and still chewing - she quickly sketched out what Sherlock soon realised was a crude approximation of the Thames as it wound through the capital. He watched as she added a few lines to indicate the bridges across the river, and then marked on the M, O, L and the question mark. Pausing for a moment to check her work, she then pushed the pad and pen across to Sherlock, and he added the letters sent across by Lestrade.

The sketch sat between them on the table, letters dotted intermittently above the long, winding bend of the river, goading Sherlock. The answer had to be _right_ there. 

“ _Will you marry me?_ ”

Sherlock’s head snapped up at Molly’s words, swivelling a full ninety degrees at the same time. He couldn’t begin to imagine what his face must look like, although Molly’s reaction was starting to give him an idea. She looked, frankly, alarmed, and then after they had stared at each other for an uncomfortably long time, Molly turned her eyes back towards the notepad, pointing at the drawing. Sherlock swallowed hard and followed her gaze, his heart-rate beginning to return to normal. 

“It’s a marriage proposal,” she went on, voice faltering a little. “I-I think, anyway. There are letters missing, but maybe we just haven’t found them yet. Look-”

By this point, Sherlock noticed, Molly’s cheeks had flamed scarlet, but it wouldn’t do to dwell on that for too long. Particularly when even a cursory re-examination of the drawing indicated that she was correct.

“So, Dean Spencer died for a marriage proposal,” he mused. Sherlock was trying hard not to feel incredibly disappointed - and cheated - by this turn of events, while conversely being impressed by Molly's puzzle-solving prowess. “But it wasn't him doing the proposing.”

“No?”

“No, he was just the messenger,” Sherlock told her. “Someone - probably someone with deep pockets - wanted to make _their_ proposal stand out. If we can work out the vantage point, the place from which the whole of the proposal can clearly be seen, we can find out who is behind it.”

He got to his feet, causing a small gaggle of opportunistic pigeons to scatter in a frenzy.

“All of the letters are positioned across from where we are now, facing the river,” Sherlock said, using his hands to demonstrate the full span of the message across the cityscape. “So it’s highly probable that they were intended to be seen from _this_ side of the river - and most likely from a similar height to where the letters were placed, to prevent any element of the message from being obscured by other buildings. It was planned very carefully - mathematically, even - either by Dean Spencer, or the person who employed him, or both, and then carried out in a very short space of time to prevent detection and the possibility of any of the letters being discovered and erased.”

Molly was looking up at him from the bench, smiling from beneath a bemused eyebrow.

“That seems weirdly over-the-top,” she said.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Well, luckily, ‘weirdly over-the-top’ is what pays the rent to Mrs Hudson,” he replied. “And keeps her in herbal soothers.”

Molly smiled at that, seemingly against her will, and Sherlock felt that same quick, rewarding dopamine hit again.

“So...we're looking for a building at least eight storeys tall, with a clear view across the river,” Molly said, getting to her feet, too.

“Shouldn't be too hard,” he replied, turning to face away from the river, contemplating the task. The case might be stupid, but the challenge was still an interesting one.

As Sherlock turned, he saw that Molly - while collecting up her lunch things - had left half of her flapjack on top of its foil wrapping. Again, his stomach growled. He gave a low cough to cover it.

“In the meantime, Lestrade needs to be looking into our urban climber's bank transactions,” he told her, taking out his phone to fire off said instruction to the Detective Inspector. “You never know, he might even find our man before we turn up at his door.”

Message sent, Sherlock waited while Molly wound herself into her scarf again, and put on her gloves. He found his eye being drawn once again to the flapjack, before he caught himself and looked instead at his feet.

“I, um, I don’t suppose you want this?” Molly asked, picking up the remainder of her snack.

“I’m fine, thank you, Molly,” Sherlock replied. “Unless...you don’t want it?”

“I’m pretty full,” she said. “Seems a shame to chuck it away, though.”

Sherlock cleared his throat.

“Well, if it would just be going to waste…”

She held the flapjack, smiling around her tightly-pressed lips. Sherlock tried not to snatch it up too quickly, instead affecting a magnanimous air that he hoped might preserve his dignity.

“I hope it won’t slow you down,” Molly said, smiling. “You know, digesting.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” he replied. “After all, this case is little more than a three.”

As Molly started to lift her duffel bag off the picnic table, Sherlock’s hand shot out before he’d given it a moment’s thought. As he hoisted it onto his shoulder again, Molly looked at him quizzically.

“I seem to recall something about a deal,” he said, as they fell into step beside each other. “The rest of the day, wasn’t it?”

Molly shrugged.

“Suits me,” she smiled.

And with the prospect of an afternoon in Molly’s company, a puzzle to solve, and an oat-based snack that turned out to be every bit as good as it looked, Sherlock realised he was in grave danger of believing it suited _him_ , too.  

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time to say thank you to tumblr user @dlrconlicense for their case suggestion of 'vandalism that turns out to be a proposal', which kicked off this whole fic for me - more aknowledgements later in the story! :-)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This, she acknowledged, used to be one of her favourite guilty pastimes; watching him think, knowing that he was so engaged in his work that she could probably get away with a good few minutes of concentrated Sherlock Holmes Appreciation. Or sneaky perving, as Meena would probably put it. But obviously she didn’t do that kind of thing now."
> 
> As they get closer to solving the case, Molly and Sherlock find themselves doing some house-hunting - and Molly reveals a secret talent...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is where I need everyone to suspend their disbelief, as this chapter involves maths. You'll no doubt read this and think, "When did she last do any maths? 1996?" Well, yes, it *was* 1996. So, I'm not entirely sure whether my theoretical maths in this chapter works even remotely - please don't think about it too closely ;-)

Although quick mental calculations were a routine part of both lab work and carrying out post-mortems, Molly had never thought for a moment that she might actually have to apply her GCSE trigonometry in real life. Half a lifetime ago, she’d almost taken Maths A Level, knowing that it would align well with the Biology and Chemistry that she had already chosen, with a medical degree in her sights. In the end, she had made the more left-field choice of English Lit. Up until this day, she hadn’t regretted that decision for a minute, but now she was fairly convinced that pure mathematics might have been more helpful for pinpointing the location of a an individual apartment in the middle of Europe’s biggest city than an in-depth knowledge of _Sense and Sensibility_.

On leaving the South Bank, Sherlock - apparently fuelled by the high butter and golden syrup content of the flapjack - had set off like a whippet, but after they had scaled four different high-rise buildings (the conventional way) in an attempt to get their bearings, Molly had suggested they sit down and try to work out the theory. Plus, her legs were bloody killing her from just trying to keep up.

At first, Sherlock was impatient to get moving again, choosing to stand a short distance away, fidgeting with his phone, while Molly perched on a wall with her notebook and the calculator on her phone.

“How wide do you think the river is here?” she asked.

“Easy enough to find out,” Sherlock replied, his thumbs flying across his phone screen. He held it out to her, and Molly scribbled down the numbers.

“And the average height of an eight-storey building...” she murmured to herself, looking it up with her own phone.

“Exactly how scientific is this likely to be?” Sherlock asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Well, it’s got to be better than picking apartment blocks at random and then making me run up eight flights of stairs,” she replied, smiling.

“Hm,” he replied, returning to his phone. He might be sceptical, but at least his body was helpfully shielding Molly from the hordes of scrambling Londoners who weren’t particularly sympathetic to a woman trying to do precalculus in the middle of a busy street.

“At least we have the start and end of the message,” Molly said. “So we can work out the distance between the two.”

Several minutes later, she had produced what she felt was probably her best effort under the circumstances, and presented the scrawled diagram to Sherlock. He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then cast them down at the page. Molly watched him closely, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed thoughtfully, his lips slightly pursed. This, she acknowledged, used to be one of her favourite guilty pastimes; watching him think, knowing that he was so engaged in his work that she could probably get away with a good few minutes of concentrated Sherlock Holmes Appreciation. Or sneaky perving, as Meena would probably put it. But obviously she didn’t do that kind of thing now.

“Molly, this is excellent,” he said suddenly - so suddenly that Molly had to hurriedly rearrange her face to cover for the gazing that was actually probably quite blatant.

“Um, well, I think we can narrow it down to quite a small area now,” she said, quickly fumbling a response. “Although it would be helpful if we had an actual map for this bit.”

Molly had barely finished her sentence, when Sherlock took two strides forward, stuck out his arm and plucked a street map from a passing tourist.

“Sorry, navigational emergency,” he explained.

“What?” stuttered the baffled man.

“I always think a new city is much more exciting when you discover it for yourself,” Sherlock added. “Why don’t you give it a try, hm?”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” Molly said, frowning at him as they started to retreat from the scene.

“Oh, _fine_ ,” he sighed. Striding back towards the mildly outraged-looking man, Sherlock foraged in Molly’s bag and then his own coat pocket.

“Here. I can offer you one banana - somewhat travel-damaged - and...either half a pack of Silk Cut, or a full packet of extra-strong mints, depending on your preference.” He paused, looking imperiously down at the slightly older man. “You’ve had a triple heart-bypass in the past two years, so I would advise taking the mints.”

Molly just had time to offer the man an apologetic smile before Sherlock had whisked her off in the opposite direction, refolding the map to suit his purposes.

“I had planned to eat that banana,” Molly told him, once she’d got her breath back. “Couldn’t you have given him something else?”

Sherlock gave her a look that suggested she was out of her mind.

“The only other thing I have in my pocket is this,” he said, taking out a small glass vial and smiling, almost proudly. Molly peered it as they walked - it contained something very small, and very definitely dead. “ _Bombus franklini_ \- one of the world’s rarest examples of honeybee. Just picked it up yesterday from a contact at the Natural History Museum; I’d actually forgotten it was still in here.”

Molly looked at him sideways; there was almost a childish delight to Sherlock’s tone, as though he was eight years old and had discovered his favourite Spiderman figure in his pocket. He needed to stop confounding her like this.

“Maybe you could just have given the bloke cash,” she smiled. “Or, you know, a really expensive Barbie.”

Sherlock looked up from his purloined map, and, to Molly’s surprise, smiled in return. And it was one of _those_ smiles, the smile usually only reserved for a fiendishly fascinating case, or a surprisingly abnormal lab result. She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but Molly knew it shouldn’t be making her feel this way.

“Come along, Professor Hooper,” Sherlock said, taking out the sheet of paper containing her earlier calculations, and handing her the map. “Time to put your mathematical reckoning to the test.”

 

0000000000

 

Roughly twenty minutes later, Molly found herself standing on a busy Southwark street, directly across the road from a branch of Little Waitrose and a Pret a Manger - and above which rose a towering block of modern flats. When she and Sherlock had rounded the corner, there was a moment when they both saw it, and immediately exchanged glances, both knowing that the building they were looking at fit the criteria exactly.

Molly followed Sherlock across the road and over to the building’s entrance, set back slightly from the pavement. There was an entry panel on the wall beside them, and she counted one hundred and twenty-eight buzzers, some with surnames and some blank. She hoped Sherlock wasn’t going to attempt to break into one hundred and twenty-eight flats in the same way as he’d broken into the locker at Liverpool Street Station - and if so, she hoped he didn’t expect her to act as his look-out.

She could see him sizing it up, taking in the CCTV above the door, and the swipe-card entry system beside it, and got the horrible (wonderful) feeling that Sherlock probably had a playbook for this precise situation.

“Excuse me?”

They both swung around, and were faced with a young woman in a smart skirt suit, carrying a laptop bag and leather file. Molly immediately assumed her to be one of the building’s residents, whose path they were blocking, and instinctively moved to one side. But the woman was looking between the two of them.

“Are you here for the Open House on apartment one-twenty?” she asked.

Before Molly could start to clear up the misunderstanding, Sherlock had taken a step forward.

“Yes,” he replied, without hesitation. “Sorry, are we early?”

The young woman smiled.

“A bit, yes. It doesn’t start until two-thirty,” she said, unzipping the file to take out a swipe-card. “I’m afraid I can’t let you into the property just yet, but you can come up and wait in the foyer if you like?”

Molly caught the briefest of glances from Sherlock, before he addressed himself to the estate agent again.

“That would be wonderful, thank you,” he replied. After the woman applied the card, Sherlock politely held the door open for her, as she juggled her armful of baggage. “One-twenty is on the...eighth floor, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right, top floor,” she replied, nodding her thanks to Sherlock, who stood back to let Molly also pass in front of him and into the building. “These flats don’t stay on the market for long - the views across the river are amazing up there.”

“That sounds exactly what we’re looking for,” Sherlock said, brightly, as they moved toward the lift. 

The estate agent turned away to summon the lift, and, Sherlock took this opportunity to smile at Molly in a manner that was so amused and conspiratorial that she found that it was impossible not to join in.

Once in the lift, the agent started to give a spiel about the building’s security, and the lift’s swipe-card-only access. Molly tried to make appreciative sounds, partly to compensate for the fact that Sherlock was saying nothing, refusing to indulge the woman’s attempts at small-talk. After a long pause, the agent tried a different tack.

“So, would this be your first place together?”

Molly felt her face flash hot, and she had to fight the instinct to step sideways away from Sherlock. The irony was not lost on her **:** having yet to look at a single potential marital home with her fiancé, she was instead about to be shown around a would-be love-nest with Sherlock.

“Yes, that’s right,” Sherlock replied, with a tight smile.

Well, Molly supposed, it wasn’t technically a lie - it _would_ be their first place together, if even a tiny iota of this situation was a true reflection of their actual lives. One thing she was grateful for, though, was the fact that Sherlock wasn’t playing up to any of this. She knew how much he liked to get into a role, to give a deception as many embellishments as it took to make it as authentic as possible. But instead he left the agent to her assumptions, and if anything, he was strangely quiet when they arrived on the eighth floor.

The agent left them in the foyer area near the lift while she went to open up the flat for viewing, and Molly took a seat on one of the plush sofas. Sherlock loitered a few feet away, intermittently scrolling and tapping at his phone, while also occasionally glancing up the corridor - and occasionally glancing over at her, although it felt to Molly as though she wasn’t supposed to have noticed. Before too long, other people started to arrive for the Open House, several of them throwing Molly very uncharitable looks, clearly viewing her as a potential barrier between them and their dream apartment. They were welcome to it - and they could take the surly Consulting Detective as well.

Finally, the estate agent returned to beckon them all down the hallway, and Molly found herself leading the way, aware of Sherlock hovering a couple of steps beside her. As they crossed the threshold, and she politely took the property brochure from the smiling agent, Molly thought she felt Sherlock’s hand hovering at her lower back. Not daring to look over her shoulder at him, she was conscious of it still as they walked down the short hallway. By the time he had moved past her to head for the front of the flat, Molly was experiencing a heavy sensation in her stomach; it didn’t matter whether Sherlock had been touching her or not - what mattered was that the _possibility_ of it had more effect on her than being touched by her own fiancé. Some people would probably call that a sign.

Molly joined Sherlock by the living room window, which did indeed have a breathtaking view over the roofs of the neighbouring buildings and right across the Thames. Sherlock's fingers were drumming on the windowsill, and he suddenly swung around.

“The bedroom has a balcony?” he said, addressing the agent, and apparently not caring, Molly noticed, that she was deep in conversation with other potential buyers. Sorry, _actual_ potential buyers.

“Yes, sir, the master bedroom,” the agent replied, managing to maintain her cheery exterior. “Go on through, if you like.”

This time there was no doubt; Molly felt Sherlock’s hand at the small of her back as he ushered her towards the bedroom (and no, the irony of _that_ was not lost on her either). At one end of the large bedroom, sideways on to the bed - where some enthusiastic interior designer had gone overboard with the scatter cushions - was a set of French doors, leading out onto a balcony large enough to accommodate chairs and a table. Sherlock raised his eyebrows at Molly, then led the way outside.

The view was stunning; even looking out of the living room window hadn't done it justice. From where they stood, there was a panoramic view covering several miles, almost completely unbroken between the Houses of Parliament and St Paul's Cathedral. Recalling that they were there to identify the site of a marriage proposal, it was, Molly had to admit, an incredibly romantic setting - or could be, in the right circumstances. Probably not when the person with whom you're sharing it is preoccupied with focusing a pair of high-powered binoculars.

But Molly had to admit that the prospect of being this close, of bringing this mystery to an end, was tantalising.

“Can you see the whole thing?” she asked Sherlock, moving to stand beside him at the rail.

“Take a look for yourself.”

He held out the binoculars, using his other hand to gently guide Molly into a better position at the far end of the balcony. Using Westminster as a landmark, she soon tracked down the first letter, and from there worked east. Given how satisfied she felt at having found this message hidden in London's urban sprawl, she was starting to understand just how the originator must have felt.

“Fairly certain we're in the right place,” Sherlock commented, his voice a low rumble near Molly's ear.

She was about to reply when the door onto the balcony opened again, and Molly turned around to see the agent evidently waiting to show it to another couple. A slightly bemused expression passed momentarily over the young woman’s face, and Molly realised then that she was still holding the binoculars.

“The view really is lovely,” Molly said quickly, flashing a smile, as she lowered the binoculars to her side and nudged them against Sherlock’s leg until he reclaimed them.

“Why don’t you come and have a look at the second bedroom?” the agent replied, as the other couple took up residence on the balcony. “It really is a very generous size. Not that I would make any assumptions about your plans, of course, but it would be ideal for a nursery.”

Molly could only think that Sherlock’s reaction was close to the one that she was hastily trying to banish from her own face, because the estate agent immediately looked alarmed.

“Or just as a nice guest room,” the agent hurriedly added. “Or an office - or...or anything, really. Lots of possibilities.”

She finally decided to cut her losses, leaving Molly and Sherlock in the middle of the master bedroom to enjoy their mutual awkwardness in peace. Sherlock cleared his throat.

“Did you...want to see the second bedroom?” he asked.

Molly looked up at him, utterly nonplussed, then watched as Sherlock blinked, quickly shook his head and gave a short cough. It was a weird moment, even by Sherlock standards.

“Of course not. Sorry. Not sure what happened there,” he said, an annoyed, self-reproving look on his face. “Anyway, yes, so now that we know we’re in the right place, it’s simply a matter of finding which one of the residents on this floor has a connection to Dean Spencer.”

“Aren’t there sixteen flats on this floor?” Molly asked.

“Yes, but only eight have this view, and this one is currently empty, so-” Sherlock stopped midway through his sentence to glance at his phone, which Molly could now see was lit up by an incoming call. “Lestrade,” he said, by way of explanation.

Molly followed Sherlock back through the clusters of milling house-hunters, and out into the relative quiet of the main hallway. Without prompting this time, Sherlock switched his phone to speaker.

“Okay, so there was no unusual activity on Dean Spencer’s bank account,” Greg said. “But he ‘ad a PayPal account set up solely to receive payments, by the looks of it. Mostly just small amounts, but then about a week ago, there was one for two-and-a-half grand.”

“From who?” Sherlock asked.

“Ah-ah,” Greg said. “Not until you tell me properly what this is all about, Sherlock. I have to justify the use of my time to the Chief Inspector, you know.”

“Fine. It’s a marriage proposal,” Sherlock sighed. “Name?”

“A what?” Greg parroted.

“A marriage proposal,” Sherlock repeated. “I believe you did that once and it didn’t turn out very well for you.”

Molly aimed an admonishing frown at Sherlock, whose expression in reply seemed to be saying _Come on,_ _you were thinking it, too_.

“Yeah, sorry I asked now,” Greg replied, acerbically. “Molly, is he ‘avin’ me on?”

“No, it’s true,” she replied. “The letters we found do spell out a marriage proposal. Sherlock thinks - we think - that Dean Spencer was paid to create it.”

“The name, please, Detective Inspector?” Sherlock repeated.

“The name on the PayPal account was Marcus Preston,” Greg said, clearly reading from his notebook. “Lives in-”

“Southwark, yes. Meridian Court. Just need the flat number, thanks.”

There was a pause, during which time Sherlock’s leg was actually vibrating with impatience.

“‘Wait a sec, it’s...one hundred and twenty-two - ere, ‘ow do you already know where ‘e lives, but didn’t know ‘is name?” Greg said eventually.

“Molly is extraordinarily good at maths,” Sherlock replied, without hesitation.

Molly’s gaze instinctively shot up to meet his, but Sherlock’s own eyes were fixed on the bland London skyline photograph on the wall. She could feel the warmth rising in her cheeks, but on this occasion it wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and she pulled her lips together in a private smile. Molly wasn’t sure Sherlock could ever bring himself to pay a direct compliment, but the indirect ones counted for a lot. When she looked up again, Sherlock was putting away his phone, and Molly was fairly sure that beneath the curtain of curls, the shells of his ears had turned slightly pink.

“Time to pay Mr Marcus Preston a visit,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height, and turning to walk down the hallway.

“Sherlock?”

“Hm?”

Molly couldn't help but smile at the fact that he seemed to have forgotten.

“D'you want me to take my bag?” she asked. “You know, just for this bit?”

He glanced down at his left shoulder, frowning, then up at her with pursed lips.

“Perhaps that might be best,” he replied. “For now.”

Molly gave him a serious nod to show that she understood completely, took the duffel bag, and walked by Sherlock’s side to the flat at the end of the hallway.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Was she flirting with him? Probably time to call it a day, shake hands on it, and jump onto different Tube lines. Definitely safer that way. And yet..."
> 
> One dead climber and diamond-encrusted Barbie later, the case - and Sherlock and Molly's day together - is coming to a close...

“Marcus Preston?”

“Oh, Jesus!”

Well, that was a first. Though Sherlock supposed an argument could be made for the whole 'back from the dead’ parallel.

“Not quite,” Sherlock replied. “But I take it you know why we’re here?”

He might have known that Marcus Preston would look like a close relative of Sebastian Wilkes and ninety-per-cent of the other idiots he had encountered at university. Management consultant? Commodities broker? Corporate lawyer? No doubt he enjoyed tedious sporting events at the weekend, prided himself on his knowledge of moronic drinking songs, and aspired to join a private members’ club.

“Sorry, I...I...yeah,” the man said. Most of the colour had drained from his face, and he raised his hand to momentarily clasp the back of his neck. “Um...I suppose you’d better come in, right?”

He shambled back into his flat, and Sherlock followed, hearing Molly close the door behind them. Quickly, he assessed his surroundings, finding nothing so far that challenged his original evaluation of Marcus Preston. At a glance, he could see that Marcus Preston's flat was mostly decorated with photographs of Marcus Preston, with or without his predictably appalling-looking friends.

“I...I saw it on the local news,” Preston said, gesturing vaguely towards the television. “About the...accident. I was expecting the police to turn up eventually, I suppose. Didn’t think they’d send Sherlock Holmes, though.”

The man frowned.

“Don’t you usually have that other bloke with you? The short one?”

Suddenly, Sherlock started to like Marcus Preston a little better.

“I believe you're referring to my blogger,” Sherlock replied. “He couldn’t make it today - had to go and look at a greenhouse. This is my Mol-...this is Dr Molly Hooper.”

He noticed Molly give him a fleeting, slightly querying look before she politely said hello to their host - and, thankfully, their host was too sleep-deprived and too shell-shocked to notice any trivial verbal slip Sherlock might (almost) have made. Instead, the man nodded, distractedly.

“It was quite a neat trick, Mr Preston,” Sherlock said, moving further into the flat, which was identical in layout to the one he and Molly had just visited. “Must have taken a little planning on your part.”

The man shrugged, his hands jammed into the pockets of his pretentiously over-priced jeans.

“I got the idea when I was on Instagram a couple of months ago,” he said, blinking. “These photos were suddenly there in my feed; this guy up on the top of Somerset House, and then the Tate Modern. Doing all this at night, with no climbing gear or anything - I had no idea that was even a thing. It seemed completely crazy but, you know, I looked at a few more of his pictures, and then I moved on. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I remembered him again.”

“Because you needed his help,” Sherlock said,

The man sighed.

“Because I needed _something_ ,” he said, dropping onto his sofa. “I...I wanted to propose to my girlfriend. Annie and I have been on-again, off-again for, what, five years, but I finally felt ready for this - I wanted to show her that things were different, that this time it would be a proper commitment. But I wanted to make it, I don’t know...special, spectacular, different from what everyone else does. We were sitting out there on the balcony one evening, and I looked out across the river, and suddenly it looked like - I don’t know, like a canvas, I guess. And that’s when I remembered this Bad Altitude guy.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I didn’t even know his actual name until it was all over Twitter this morning. We never even met.”

“So, how did it work?” Molly asked. Sherlock could detect an edge of distaste in her voice, although she was trying to sound measured.

“I contacted him via Instagram, and it went from there,” Marcus Preston replied, with another quick shrug. “We agreed a price, a date for him to complete it, he gave me his PayPal details and that was it. Obviously, I didn’t...I didn’t think _this_ would happen. God, why didn’t I just do a hot-air balloon ride, or hire a flash-mob, or something?”

For a moment, Sherlock was rather afraid that Marcus Preston expected him to answer that question, in which case he wouldn’t have received a very flattering answer (plus, he would first have needed to allow Sherlock time to Google what the hell a flash-mob was).

But instead, Molly spoke.

“Why didn’t you just...ask her?”

In the immediate silence that followed, Preston looked up at her, at first slightly uncomprehending, and then with a look of sort of hopeless surrender. Marcus Preston was experiencing, Sherlock realised, what it was like to come up against the quiet incisiveness of Molly Hooper and be found wanting.

“It was all for nothing, anyway,” Preston replied, shaking his head. “She said no. And that was _before_ she knew I’d got a man killed.” There was a pause, and then he gave a wry laugh, as he looked back up at Sherlock. “At least _you_ got a better result.”

Sherlock frowned, and only understood once Marcus Preston nodded in the direction of Molly, and more specifically, at the ring on her left hand. Apparently, there was no end to the vexation that thing could cause him. Molly had obviously caught on a few seconds sooner than he had, and the science of deduction was not necessary to work out that at this moment, she was clearly willing the ceiling to fall in on top of them all. For his part, Sherlock felt suddenly nauseous, strangely reminiscent of when he’d been punched in the stomach by that Serbian prison guard.

“Congratulations,” Preston added, forcing himself to smile. “Really, I mean it. It’s great when it works out.”

“Um, thank you,” Molly replied, hesitantly. Sherlock noticed the flush of pink to her cheeks, but quickly decided it was best not to spend time analysing it.

“So, what happens now?” the man asked.

“Well, setting aside the likely awkwardness of the predicament,” Sherlock replied. “I’m sure it’s entirely possible to return an engagement ring for a full refund.”

Marcus Preston looked perplexedly at him, while at the same time, Sherlock heard Molly give a light but pointed cough.

“Oh, yes, I see,” Sherlock added. “Well, I would suggest that you don’t go anywhere; a Scotland Yard detective may well wish to speak to you later today. In theory, charges of unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter could be on the table, but given that you appear to be more of a hapless idiot than a criminal mastermind, I suspect encouraging or assisting an illegal activity may be a more likely charge.”

The despondent expression on Marcus Preston’s face was the last sight Sherlock took in before leaving the flat, Molly a few steps behind him. Down the corridor, the estate agent from earlier was still wrangling prospective flat-buyers, and gave them a puzzled look as they approached.

“Just been getting a feel for the place,” Sherlock told her quickly, as they passed by. “Not really for us.”

Once they were outside, he took out his phone, intending to text Lestrade, and saw that he’d received one from John a few minutes earlier:

**Back home now. Want us to meet you somewhere? - JW**

Sherlock’s gaze darted to Molly, and then back at his phone. He dismissed John’s message, and proceeded with contacting Lestrade, filling him in on the final details of the case. Molly had obviously surmised what he was doing.

“Do you really think he might be charged with those things?” she asked, as they crossed over the road.

“Probably not,” he replied, slackening his pace to allow her to walk comfortably beside him. “There is plenty of evidence that Dean Spencer was well aware of the risks involved. Most likely it will just be a caution.”

  
Molly smirked.

“What, a caution not to be such a massive tit in the future?”

Caught off-guard, Sherlock gave a chuff of laughter. He and Molly exchanged a look, and before he realised what he was doing, Sherlock heard himself speaking again.

  
“Do you fancy a coffee? There’s a place just over there.”

Molly followed his gaze, and then looked back at him with an expression that fell somewhere between surprised and - he thought - pleased.

“I’d love one,” she replied.

Sherlock was surprised at the relief he felt at her agreement, and swiftly dismissed the voice in his head (which sounded suspiciously like Mycroft) asking him why, if the case was closed, he was choosing to prolong this any further.

The coffee van on the corner was a silver, Airstream-style trailer, with a few tables and chairs set up on the pavement in front of it. Although Sherlock of course knew how Molly took her coffee, it occurred to him that he had never before put this knowledge into use - but when he presented her with her drink, she didn’t query it, and he didn’t explain. Instead, she thanked him, and rewarded him with another smile that Sherlock suspected he shouldn’t commit to his Mind Palace.

“At least Dean Spencer’s family will get the full picture of what happened,” she said, wrapping her hands around the cardboard cup. “I always think that must help in some way. I hope, anyway.”

Sherlock sipped his coffee and considered this. Molly’s job, the way he saw it, was to piece together the medical narrative that would provide the police, the coroner - and in many cases Sherlock himself - with what they needed to either progress or conclude an investigation. But to Molly, he realised, that was only part of it; it was also about giving grieving relatives the resolution they needed. He couldn’t quite believe he was only recognising this now.

“If I’ve learned anything,” Sherlock said, setting down his coffee cup. “It’s that anyone who thinks they might fall from a very tall building should ensure that they are thoroughly prepared. And never go it alone.”

He slid a glance over to Molly, and knew from her smile, and the flare of pink to her cheeks, that she had understood his meaning. By the time of his fall from Bart’s, John had been his partner and companion for over a year, but it was that night in the lab with Molly that made Sherlock understand what it was to truly place himself in another person’s hands - and to have that trust repaid so absolutely.

“Well, at least you’ll have one happy client by the end of today,” Molly said, brightly, cutting through the palpable tension in a way that Sherlock could only see as deliberate. “The doll collector - Marriott, wasn’t it?”

“Mm,” Sherlock confirmed. He’d been thinking about the conclusion to that particular case (if it could even be called that) on and off during their visit to Marcus Preston.

“Sherlock?” Molly said gently. “Is...are you alright?”

“Yes,” he replied, unaware that his mind that drifted off for quite so long. “Don’t you think it’s strange the way that human beings confer value on things? The lavish, expensive gesture of a marriage proposal; the sixty-thousand-pound children’s toy sealed away in a cabinet.”

 Molly smiled.

“How much did you spend on that dead bee, Sherlock?”

“That’s entirely different,” he replied, fighting a smile of his own. “That was for science.”

Molly swilled the contents of her cup around, thoughtfully.

“So...are you heading back to Baker Street?” she asked.

Sherlock looked at her, trying to gauge whether there was any subtext to this question.

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “It’s only five o’clock, and it’s a well-established fact that nothing good really happens until after dark.”

Molly smiled as she took another sip, looking over her cup at him.

“Well, yeah, that is true.”

_Was she flirting with him?_ Probably time to call it a day, shake hands on it, and jump onto different Tube lines. Definitely safer that way. And yet...

“I...I suppose you’ll need to be getting back...” he said, aiming for casual but painfully aware that it sounded anything but.

“I’ve got a bit of time,” Molly replied. “I mean, if you don’t mind me tagging along.”

“I don’t mind,” Sherlock replied quickly. “That is, if you don’t. I realise that you’ve given up your whole Saturday…”

“It’s too late to defrost the freezer now,” Molly smiled, nodding towards his phone. “What have you got?”

Buoyed by Molly’s encouragement, Sherlock dug out his phone and flicked to his inbox, where he’d flagged several cases for emergency purposes (either alleviation of boredom or payment of rent). He reeled off the list.

“Well, there’s allegedly a blind car thief at large in the Streatham area, a haunting that is almost certainly a stalker, a kidnapping that is almost certainly an elopement, reports of identical lawn ornaments appearing all over London, a case that seems likely to be poisoning-by-room-service, and a person or persons stealing all the drinking straws from branches of Gourmet Burger Kitchen. The choice is yours, Molly.”

But as soon as he’d finished speaking - and before Molly had time to do anything more than digest the information - Sherlock knew there was a much better option. One that would undoubtedly not have entered into his mind if he hadn’t spent the day in the company of this woman. 

“Unless you fancy one final trip across London to see a six-year-old girl in Mile End about her missing doll?” he suggested. “It would be more or less on your way home, after all.”

At this, Molly’s face broke into another smile, and she was looking at him in _that_ way - the way that always made Sherlock feel like she was seeing something in him that he couldn’t be sure was even there. It unnerved him sometimes, but it was like Molly’s jokes - just because they were terrible, it didn’t mean he wanted her to stop making them.

“I’d like that,” she told him.

With a smile and a nod, Sherlock sprung up from the table, deposited their empty coffee cups in a nearby bin, and scooped up Molly’s bag; he felt oddly invigorated, and suspected that it wasn’t solely down to the coffee. They could take a cab over the river as far as Tower Hill, then switch to the Tube for the rest of the journey (for some inexplicable reason, Molly liked taking the Tube); all being well, they might conclude their business by six-thirty, leaving plenty of time to get some chips either en route or back in Marylebone, and then if it still wasn’t _too_ late, he might possibly suggest Molly come back to Baker Street to look at the experiment he currently had set up in the kitchen.

_Buying time, Sherlock?_ Mycroft’s oily tones suddenly wormed their way into his brain. _For what possible purpose, brother mine?_

Sherlock swiped away the intrusion, and started to scan the street for approaching taxis. As he was doing so, the bag he was carrying started to emit a muffled chirruping noise.

“Sorry, I’d, um, I’d better get that,” Molly said, taking the bag from Sherlock’s shoulder and going in search of her phone. “It could be work.”

When she looked at the screen, and a strange, self-consciousness came over her, Sherlock knew it wasn’t someone at Bart’s. Molly glanced at him before answering.

“Hi...no, everything’s fine...no, sorry, I wasn’t planning to go out, but something came up…”

They had stopped walking, Molly stepping to one side to avoid other pedestrians; Sherlock did the same, leaving what he imagined would feel like a discreet distance to allow Molly her privacy (he couldn’t help it if it was still possible to hear her half of the conversation).

“...Mary - well, actually, it was something Sherlock needed help with….no, not at the hospital...we’re in Southwark, but actually we’re just-”

The Fiancé must have interjected with something, because Sherlock saw Molly glance over at him; she was biting on her lower lip slightly as she listened.

“...oh, right...what time?...yes, okay...no, no, that would be nice...”

Another quick, uneasy glance from Molly, and Sherlock knew it was all over. He felt it. Something deep within his chest suddenly dropped like lead.

“...yes, me too - I mean, I, um, I love you, too.”

As she tucked her phone back in her bag, Sherlock realised that his face had started to ache, so tightly had he been clenching his jaw. He kept his eyes on the street ahead, feeling the need more than ever to feign polite indifference.

“That was Tom,” Molly said, fairly unnecessarily. “He, um, he asked if I wanted to meet him for an early dinner near Covent Garden, so I...I probably can’t-”

“No, of course you can’t - I understand,” Sherlock replied.

“I would have loved to,” Molly added, fiddling with the sleeve of her coat. “But it’s just...well...you know.”

“Yes. Absolutely. You must go.”

Molly nodded, her eyes cast down at the ground. Sherlock was aware that if they were both imprisoned within some moronic, sentimental film, this would be the point at which he would say something meaningful and revelatory - but how would that possibly go? _I can’t give you what you want, and we both know that I’m totally incapable of making you happy, but how about you ditch the insipid milksop fiancé anyway, and spend all of your spare time doing this with me instead?_ He was fairly sure that wasn’t going to cut it, even on a bad day.

“I suppose I’ll walk to Waterloo and get the Tube from there,” Molly said. “Are you heading that way, too, or…?”

“Actually, I think I’ll walk,” Sherlock replied quickly. “For a while. Enjoy your evening, Molly.”

He gave her a taut smile and turned up the collar of his coat.

“Thanks,” she responded, with a look of uncertainty. “You, too. I...suppose I’ll see you at Bart’s sometime soon?”

“I imagine so,” Sherlock said. The crispness of his answers made him loathe himself a little bit, but he didn’t trust what else might tumble out of him.

“Oh, hang on,” Molly said, slipping her bag from her shoulder. “You need this back. Otherwise, I might be tempted to sell it on the Barbie black-market and then hit the casinos with the proceeds.”

She gave a nervous little laugh, and handed him the box. Sherlock took it soberly, and wedged it somewhat awkwardly under his arm. With a final nod to Molly, he turned to walk in the direction of Southwark Bridge, utterly determined not to commit the completely futile act of looking back. He only allowed himself to do so when he was forced to turn the corner, by which time Molly was nowhere to be seen.

Good. Much simpler.

The chips could still happen, he reasoned, as could the continuation of the experiment in his kitchen - it wasn’t as though he didn’t usually do both activities alone, anyway.

As he walked across the bridge a few minutes later, Sherlock thought about John’s text, about whether to reply and get stuck into something else. It would at least provide a distraction, and John (unlike Mary) was very unlikely to quiz him on his day. But despite this, his phone remained in his pocket.

It was only once he was in the back of a black cab, by that time just north of Limehouse, that he heard his phone buzz in his pocket, and assumed it was probably John again. But when he retrieved his phone, the screen was pulsing with Molly’s name instead.

**Thank you for today. Promise you can have the next spare spleen after all - Mx**

Sherlock stared at the screen for a long moment, considering how wise it would be to reply.

**Pretty sure we settled on liver - SH**

He couldn't help thinking about where Molly was and what she was doing. Sending a message while Beanpole was in the loo? Or maybe he'd been unavoidably detained at work, and would regrettably have to skip dinner - as well as having to skip going back to Molly's house entirely.

**Fine - liver. But you have to come to Bart's and get it - no delivery service - Mx**

Sherlock felt a small smile start to form, despite himself. It went against his principles to send more than two messages within any text conversation (unless it involved a murder, or he was tormenting Mycroft out of boredom), but his thumbs were already typing.

**Look forward to it - SH**

When no response immediately followed, he assumed that was the end of it, but a few minutes later, he heard a further alert.

**If you change your mind about the Best Man book, let me know - Mx**

The message was signed off with a smiley-face icon thing, and Sherlock couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be encouraging, or whether Molly was having fun at his expense. Possibly both.

However, he had revised his views on a number of things during the course of the day, ~~but~~ and on this one issue he was resolute: He did _not_ need an Idiot’s Guide to help him muddle his way through John and Mary’s wedding. The _idiot_ could keep his Idiot’s Guide, as far as Sherlock was concerned.

As for keeping other things…

_No._ That line of thought could not be pursued, and he quashed it ruthlessly.

He was less successful with the smile that would keep reoccurring. But, after all, it had been a much more interesting day than he’d anticipated.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go, an epilogue of sorts. 
> 
> In the meantime, one final round of thanks - this time, to ohaine, juldooz, @noregretsnotearsnoanxieties, rachel-614 and forthegenuine, whose tumblr casefic suggestions made it into this chapter in the form of the cases Sherlock suggests to Molly :-)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days after Sherlock and Molly conclude their investigations, John drops in at Baker Street and discovers that his friend has taken up a new interest...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! I always said this was intended to be a 'missing scene'-type thing between TEH and TSoT, so I guess it might not end the way people would ideally like it to - but hopefully it shows that Sherlock was not unaffected by the day he spent with Molly...

It had been Mary's idea to check on him. Although it was fairly unusual to hear nothing at all from Sherlock for a few days, John wasn't particularly concerned, and had resisted her ‘suggestion’. The fact that Sherlock hadn't responded to texts or even to Mary's email about the wedding venue suggested disinterest - or sulking - rather than anything more insidious. Still, it had become clear that Mary wasn't going to let him rest until they had first-hand evidence of Sherlock's well-being - except _she_ had a shift at the clinic that day, so it was John alone who let himself into 221 Baker Street, automatically wiping his shoes before Mrs Hudson sprang out of 221A and caught him doing otherwise.

From the bottom of the stairs, he could hear the sound of muffled music. He was used to Sherlock's long, drawn-out violin sessions - they were usually depressingly mournful or gratingly frenetic, and either invariably made John want to throw his newspaper (or laptop) at his friend. But this was recorded music, a whole orchestra. There was no response when John knocked at the door of the flat, but when he took the decision to go in, he was greeted by a sudden and fairly startling trumpet flourish.

Across the living room, Sherlock was standing by his desk, his hands clasped behind his back and his lips pursed. He acknowledged John with the merest quirk of his eyebrow.

“Appreciate the entrance music, Sherlock, thank you,” John said, grinning, unable to resist. “So, what happens now? Do I get a knighthood?”

“It’s better, don’t you think?” Sherlock said, apparently ignoring him.

"Er, that depends," John replied, with a bemused frown. "Than thrash-metal or free-form jazz? Yep, definitely."

Sherlock gave what looked like a sigh of sufferance.

"It's 'The Prince of Denmark's March' by Jeremiah Clarke," he said. "Originally attributed to Henry Purcell, of course. Anyway, it's less obvious than the Wagner. Everyone will be expecting that."

John finally felt as though he was starting to catch up.

"You're talking about 'The Wedding March', right?" he said.

"Nooo," Sherlock said, with dwindling patience. "’The Wedding March’ is Mendelssohn, the ‘Bridal Chorus’ is Wagner. Why does everyone always confuse the two? Both incredibly clichéd, though, which is why I think there should be something that adds just that little element of surprise.”

John folded his arms, narrowing his eyes at Sherlock.

“Not sure that’s why people go to weddings, Sherlock.”

He saw a look of mild distaste come over Sherlock’s face.

“Yes, well, that’s the one thing during my research that I haven’t been able to satisfactorily discover,” he said.

“Your research?” John asked, carefully, almost afraid to. Although he knew what was going on, he also had no idea what was going on - which was a very familiar position to be in, when it came to Sherlock.

Sherlock gave a hum of affirmation, and gestured vaguely over his shoulder. That was when John finally took proper notice of the living room wall - and acknowledged that Sherlock maybe had a point when he accused him of seeing rather than observing.

“Dear-God-in-Heaven-what-is-going-on-here?” he blurted, still trying to absorb what was in front of him.

What John was traditionally used to seeing in this spot was a ‘murder wall’, plastered in news clippings, maps, photographs of victims and suspects, index cards, and hastily scrawled ideas, often messily connected up with drawing pins and red string. What he was _not_ expecting to see was...whatever this was. He took a couple of steps closer for confirmation, taking in the cuttings from what seemed to be wedding magazines, along with numerous fabric samples, colour schemes torn out of paint catalogues, pictures of floral arrangements, and what looked very much like floor plans of both St Mary’s Church in Sutton Mallet _and_ the hotel for the reception.

It might be wedding-themed, but it was still bloody disturbing.

“Just a few...concepts,” Sherlock replied, mildly, with a tilt of his head. He crossed to the table and removed his phone from the speaker-dock, abruptly silencing the trumpets, mid-flourish.

“For our wedding?” John said, slowly.

“Yours and Mary’s, yes,” Sherlock replied.

“Well, yeah, obviously I didn’t mean _our_ wedding,” John said, gesturing between the two of them. “Although I think that off-the-shoulder dress might look pretty good on you.”

He also suspected that Mrs Hudson might have the plans for _that_ wedding covered, just on the off-chance.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and went back to what he’d been doing when John arrived, holding blank pieces of paper up to the light one after another, before placing them in one of two piles on his desk. When John looked more closely, he realised that both the desk and the coffee table were stacked with wedding-related books, most of which had pages marked with a system of different-coloured sticky-notes. He was starting to think that Mary was right to want to check on Sherlock.

“Sherlock,” John began, taking a breath. “What’s going on?”

Sherlock glanced up, brow furrowed.

“What?” he queried.

In response, John challenged him with a look. Sherlock shrugged.

“I was merely concerned that we don’t have long to pull this wedding together,” he said. “I mean, have you even thought about a seating plan yet?”

“We haven’t even thought about _guests_ yet,” John told him. “Although at least we do now have an orangery to put them in. Seriously, Sherlock, what’s going on with you? A few days ago, I thought we’d have to stage a kidnapping to get you to the wedding, and now…”

At this, Sherlock actually looked slightly put-out.

“I thought you and Mary would appreciate me taking my role as Best Man seriously,” he said, slightly indignantly.

“Yeah, it’s great” John nodded. “But this is more like Wedding Planner than Best Man.”

Sherlock shrugged, furrowing his brow again.

“Then isn’t this better?”

John opened his mouth to answer, then decided against it. Clearly, Sherlock was always either going to take a case in Australia in order to avoid attending the wedding, or he was going to do something like _this_ \- some midway point was out of the question. John gestured to the pieces of paper Sherlock was still holding.

“Are they...?”

“Samples of paper for the invitations, yes,” Sherlock replied. “I can’t decide between the cotton fibre or the linen finish; I’m separating these into nos and maybes. You’re not planning to include an owl or alternative bird of prey in the ceremony, are you? I’ve been watching videos on YouTube and it’s apparently a thing – owls delivering the wedding rings during the ceremony – although judging by some of the videos, the margin for error is fairly substantial.”

John was caught off-guard by this complete non-sequitur.

“Hang on - owls? Er, no, I don’t think so - Mary is frightened of them.”

Sherlock gave him a curious, dubious look.

“Mmm, no she isn’t.”

“Yeah,” John persisted, feeling the back of his neck grow a little warmer (damnit). “She is.”

Sherlock continued to stare.

“Okay, fine!” John said, throwing up his hands. “ _I’m_ frightened of them! _No owls_.”

“No owls,” Sherlock repeated, as he actually noted down this fact on his phone. “Tea?”

John accepted the offer, though he followed Sherlock into the kitchen, mindful of the last cup of tea he saw Sherlock prepare at Baker Street. The sight of Sherlock’s phone had also prompted John to remember something he was supposed to do - that is, Mary had made him promise he would do. He dug his own device out of his pocket, clicking until he reached the folder of photos.

“So, ah, how did things go the other day, in the end?” John asked. “When Molly stood in for us?”

Sherlock’s gaze flicked up at him from where he was examining mugs on the draining board. 

“It was fine. Thank you,” Sherlock replied. “The cases were disappointingly mundane, but Molly had come all that way - thanks to _your_ fiancée - so I didn’t like to just call the whole thing off.”

John cleared his throat.

“Mary found this,” he said. He held out his phone to show Sherlock the webpage from _MailOnline_ that Mary had shoved in his face the previous night when he’d been attempting to sleep.

Sherlock approached the phone screen with a cautious, poker-faced expression. He scanned it for little more than a second, but before Sherlock’s brow wrinkled in a display of mild disgust and exasperation, John noticed something else flash momentarily across his friend’s face. John wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but _now_ he was slightly curious; it reminded him of the moment that Sherlock first clapped eyes on Molly’s fiancé, one of the few times when he’d seen Sherlock Holmes genuinely speechless.

“‘Hat Detective hunts down perfect love-nest with mystery brunette’,” John read aloud, deciding to enjoy the moment. “Hope Tom doesn’t browse the gossip sites in his lunch hour.”

The accompanying photo had been a bit of a surprise, John conceded (although it still didn’t warrant being prodded awake at 11.30pm). Whichever opportunist toe-rag had taken the slightly wonky shot on their phone and then blabbed to press had managed to capture Sherlock and Molly apparently looking around a swanky-looking flat together. John supposed that would have been enough on its own, but the fact that they were standing very close together - and Sherlock’s hand was lingering at Molly’s lower back - was a bit more incriminating. Or at least it might _be_ more incriminating if this was anybody but Sherlock.

"That flat was a key focal point for the investigation," Sherlock replied, gruffly. He stuffed two teabags into the British Isles teapot.

"Yeah," John smiled. "But even you must see it looks a _bit_ not good."

"I don't see anything of the sort," Sherlock said, flicking the switch on the kettle. "But then again, I'm not a crass, feeble-minded idiot. What colour is Mary thinking of for the bridesmaids? We can't have them clashing with the floral displays."

John kept his eyes on Sherlock while he pocketed his phone again; the consulting detective seemed genuinely a little rattled. A fear of Tom seemed extremely unlikely; a fear of upsetting Molly was _possible_ , he supposed.

"Not a clue," John replied. "Look, I'm really grateful, honestly, that you're putting so much into this, but you know it's customary to let the bride and groom have a say in _some_ of this stuff." He thought about a few of the wedding-themed conversations he'd had with Mary so far, and revised that statement. "Well, the bride, anyway."

Sherlock gave a sort of half-nod of acknowledgement, and started evaluating a series of different styles of envelope while he waited for the kettle to boil. Conversation clearly not forthcoming, John made a tentative step towards the ‘wedding wall’, daring himself to look more closely at Sherlock’s collage masterpiece (which included photos of Mary and himself, helpfully labelled Subject A: The Bride’ and ‘Subject B: The Groom’).

From where Sherlock was standing at his desk, he cleared his throat lightly.

“Has...has Mary chosen a chief bridesmaid yet?”

It was Sherlock’s tone that made John turn around: casual in that way that is so contrived it sounds anything _but_ casual.

 “Yeah, I think so,” John told him. “She’s just waiting to ask her. Her name’s Janine; she and Mary used to work together briefly, I think. I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she seems nice - you know, fun.”

Sherlock nodded slowly.

“Why are you asking?” John continued.

If the tables were turned and _he_ was the single Best Man, then yeah, he might have an interest in finding out about the chief bridesmaid; but even with his newfound interest in the trappings and traditions of weddings, it seemed unlikely that Sherlock was looking to tick _that_ particular box.

An evasive look came over Sherlock’s face, as he turned to walk back to the kitchen.

“Nothing. No reason,” he replied. “Only...it had occurred that perhaps Mary might have considered Molly for the role.”

John opened his mouth to respond, but Sherlock beat him to it.

“They’re friends, aren’t they? And Molly possesses excellent organisational and problem-solving skills. She’s punctual, reliable, and calm in a crisis.”

John couldn’t help giving a snort of laughter.

“Yeah, well, if someone needs to fake a death during the wedding, we know Molly’s got that covered.”

“What’s more”, Sherlock continued, undeterred. “I believe that she is not averse to a social gathering based largely around alcohol consumption, and that on occasion she enjoys wearing an overpriced dress. She also likes flowers. I think that just about covers the duties of chief bridesmaid, doesn’t it?”

“Well, there’s the dancing, too...” John replied, raising an eyebrow.

He saw Sherlock’s eyes widen momentarily, before adopting a testy frown.

“Yes, well, she probably doesn’t mind that either,” he said, quickly, as he poured boiling water into the waiting teapot.

John followed him back into the kitchen, pausing by the table.

“Sherlock,” he began. “Molly didn’t put you up to this, did she? The other day?”

At this, Sherlock’s eyes shot up, and he looked positively appalled.

“Of course not!” he replied, tersely. “Molly would _never_...and besides, the other day was work; it was strictly professional. Believe it or not, we did not spend the entire day gossiping about the minutiae of your nuptials.”

It was tempting to poke the hornet’s nest a bit more for his own amusement, but John knew that Mary would want him to keep Sherlock on side - if she found out he’d trampled all over Sherlock’s nascent wedding enthusiasm, it wouldn’t even be the sofa he’d be sleeping on, it would be the pavement.

“Seriously, though, Mary was actually talking about Molly and the bridesmaid thing,” John said, hitching himself onto one of the kitchen stools. “But she reckons they might be going through a rough patch, Molly and Tom.”

“Really?” Sherlock said, looking up again. He cleared his throat quietly, straightening up. “I mean...really?”

“Mary and Molly were supposed to go and look at wedding dresses, or something, and Molly cancelled at the last minute,” John said, shrugging. Personally, he wasn’t sure that one cancelled dress-shopping outing equalled imminent relationship meltdown, but Mary clearly saw it differently.  “Anyway, now Mary is worried about Molly having to be caught up in planning someone else’s wedding, if things with Tom are...well, you know. Could be a bit awkward.”

Sherlock gave a thoughtful nod.

“And Molly is great,” John added. “But I’m not sure whether she’s a hen-do kind of person - you know, big group of women, lots of Prosecco, L-plates, novelty things shaped like male...appendages.”

At this, John saw Sherlock visibly blanch (he was clearly in for a tame stag-do, if _this_ reaction was anything to go by).

“Anyway, I think this Janine is exactly that kind of person,” John said. “Plus, I think she’s been dropping a _lot_ of hints to Mary since she found out we were engaged. Do you want to meet her - you know, before the wedding?”

Sherlock opened the fridge and deposited a half-empty milk bottle on the counter-top.

“Does she like solving crimes?”

“Not that she mentioned.”

“Then probably not necessary,” Sherlock said, pouring their tea.

John took the mug that was nudged in his direction, giving the milk a quick sniff before adding some to his tea. Somewhere in the course of the past ten minutes, Sherlock’s whole demeanour seemed to have changed, but he was damned if he understood why. Maybe he should have been more encouraging about the Psychotic Wedding Wall of Baker Street.

When he looked up again, Sherlock was eating something. Something, John noticed, that _he_ hadn't been offered.

"Is that flapjack?"

"Yup," Sherlock replied, still chewing. A small, flower-patterned Tupperware box sat on the counter behind him, a couple of pieces of flapjack still remaining.

"Did you make it?" John asked. "Because you probably shouldn't eat anything baked for you by a client. And if they came from Mrs Hudson, you should maybe ask first whether she made them for ‘medicinal’ purposes."

"They're perfectly fine," Sherlock replied, brushing oats from his hands. "An unexpected acquisition when I was out yesterday."

Nope, he still wasn't going to offer them around, the git.

"So, what's on the agenda this afternoon?" John asked. "More wedding...stuff? I can give you a hand if you like. Mary could come by after work; we could get a takeaway."

As he was finishing his sentence, Sherlock's phone vibrated on the kitchen table; Sherlock snatched up the device before John could see the name on the screen. As Sherlock's eyes rapidly scanned the message, his face started to break into a smile - the first genuine smile John had seen since he'd arrived. Whatever it was, it had to be at least an eight.

Almost immediately, Sherlock knocked back a deep swig of tea, dispatched the rest down the sink, and snatched up his jacket from the chair.

"Should I come?" John asked, mug poised in mid-air.

"Not necessary," Sherlock called, already in the hallway. "And I will almost certainly be engaged in an experiment for the rest of the afternoon and evening."

Now John couldn’t help feeling sort of deflated himself.

"I could keep you company," he offered. "Update the blog maybe."

"Thank you, but no need," Sherlock replied, popping his head back around the kitchen door.

"Is...have you got someone coming over?" John ventured. He didn't want to rule out the implausible after all.

"No. Possibly. Probably not," Sherlock said, in rapid succession. "Do stay and finish your tea, though."

He disappeared back into the hallway.

"Oh," John said, now mostly to himself. "Thanks very much."

He was definitely going to eat at least _two_ of those flapjacks the moment he heard the front door close. His gaze drifted from the Tupperware box to the table, where he noticed that something genuinely implausible seemed to have happened - in his haste, Sherlock had left his phone behind. John reached over to pick it up, and saw that the message that spurred Sherlock into action was still on the screen:

**One liver ready for collection. Signs of mild cirrhosis, but otherwise a beaut - Mx**

No sooner had John read the message than Sherlock burst back into the kitchen, swiping the phone out of John's hand and aiming a censuring frown at him before sweeping out again. After only a few seconds, Hurricane Holmes returned, this time snatching up the Tupperware box and murmuring something about eating the rest on the way and using the box later.  He vanished again, and very soon John heard the sound of clattering size elevens on the staircase, which were quickly followed by the slam of the front door (and the familiar plea of “ _Sherlock!_ ” from somewhere within Mrs Hudson’s flat).

John sat staring at the doorway for a moment, feeling as though he was still playing catch-up. Obviously, Mary would be expecting a full report when he saw her later, and at this point, he honestly wasn’t sure what to tell her. He was starting to think there was something else behind the sudden mania for wedding planning, but what was he missing? And then the sudden abandonment of that wedding mania in favour of Sherlock’s more usual pursuits (if you could ever call experimentation on human livers ‘usual’).

Bereft of his intended snack - and unsure that he wanted to spend the afternoon in the shadow of the Wedding Wall - John got to his feet. As he was putting his jacket back on, his phone chirped with a text from Mary.

**Hiya! How is he? xxx**

John cocked his head to one side, beholding the splendour of the living room wall, and considered how best to respond.

**Yeah, fine. He’s got a new hobby - tell you later.**

As he locked the front door of the flat, Mary responded.

**Takeaway tonight? Just asked Molly, but she thinks she’ll be busy. Might be a good sign?? Xxx**

Generally speaking, John tried to steer well clear of other people’s relationship dramas, but he had to admit that a reconciliation between Molly and Tom would at least prevent Mary from worrying. He thunked down the stairs, reading Mary’s follow-up text as he went:

**Ask Sherlock about takeaway - tell him he can choose xxx**

John stopped, feeling the frown lines form on his brow. He glanced back up to the door of 221B, and then back down to the front door. Thoughts still whirring, he typed a response.

**He’s busy tonight too.**

Even as he sent the message, he could feel something needling at his brain. The questions about bridesmaids, the text about the liver, Sherlock’s sudden change of plans, Molly’s unavailability - all things that, on their own, were completely unremarkable. But…

No. Sherlock might accuse him of seeing without observing, but now he was going too far the other way - he was _trying_ to make connections between things that weren’t there. And he definitely wasn’t going to mention this stuff to Mary, who was stressing enough about Molly as it was.

Or worse, if he told her, Mary might start on with her old ‘theory’ again, the one involving Tom’s (admittedly marked) resemblance to Sherlock, and the way she reckoned Sherlock looked at Molly when he thought nobody was looking. God no. He’d heard enough about that to last a lifetime - and considering he and Mary were committing to a lifetime together, it was a subject best left alone.

His pocket vibrated with another text from Mary:

**???!! xxx**

Oh God - it was starting already. Mary had taken the bait, and now John knew _exactly_ how his evening was going to go, and no amount of smooth moves was going to change that.

As he pulled the door to 221 closed behind him, John had the distinct feeling that asking Molly Hooper to fill in for them on that investigation the other day had not been quite the innocuous solution they’d thought it would be.

   
THE END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
